TEXTBOOK   EDITION 

THE  CHRONICLES 

OF  AMERICA  SERIES 

ALLEN  JOHNSON 

EDITOR 

GERHARD    R.   LOMER 

CHARLES   W.   JEFFERYS 

ASSISTANT  EDITORS 


THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

A   CHRONICLE 

OF   THE   OLD    SOUTH 

BY    WILLIAM    E.   DODD 


NEW    HAVEN:    YALE    UNIVERSITY    PRESS 

TORONTO:    GLASGOW,    BROOK    &    CO. 

LONDON:     HUMPHREY     MILFORD 

OXFORD    .UNIVERSITY  '  PRESS 


Copyright,  1919,  by  Yale  University  Press 


CONTENTS 

I.     THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850                                Page  1 

II.     THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  "  24 

III.  THE   SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY   OF  THE   COT 

TON-PLANTER  "  48 

IV.  LIFE    AND    LITERATURE   IN  THE   LOWER 

SOUTH  "  71 

V.     RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  "  97 

VI.     THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  "  118 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  "  147 

INDEX  -  155 


THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 
CHAPTER  I 

THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850 

THE  region  which  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century 
was  known  as  the  Cotton  Kingdom  extended  a 
distance  of  more  than  a  thousand  miles  from  South 
Carolina  to  the  neighborhood  of  San  Antonio, 
Texas.  The  breadth  of  this  country,  from  north  to 
south,  ranged  from  two  hundred  miles  in  Carolina 
and  Texas  to  six  or  seven  hundred  miles  in  the 
Mississippi  Valley.  The  land  on  which  cotton 
could  be  easily  grown  measured  perhaps  as  much 
as  four  hundred  thousand  square  miles  in  1850,  if 
we  count  Texas,  Arkansas,  and  Florida,  which  were 
then,  however,  yielding  only  small  crops.  Large 
areas  in  the  lower  South  were  not  suited  to  cotton 
culture,  although  they  contributed  to  the  cotton 
kingdom  other  economic  resources  of  no  small 


2  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

value.  The  pine  barrens  of  South  Carolina,  Geor 
gia,  Alabama,  Mississippi,  and  Louisiana  could 
produce  immense  quantities  of  lumber;  and  the 
hills  and  mountains  of  the  two  Carolinas,  Georgia, 
and  Alabama  supplied  a  large  portion  of  the  grain 
and  the  whisky  consumed  on  the  plantations. 

>The  cotton  belt  is  a  well- watered  country  with 
an  annual  rainfall  almost  twice  as  great  as  that 
of  Illinois  or  New  York.  Moreover  the  snows 
of  the  lower  Appalachians  which  lie  upon  the 
densely  wooded  highlands  and  towering  mountains 
during  half  the  year  are  carried  off  through  the 
eastern  half  of  the  cotton  country  by  numerous 
rivers  whose  average  volume  is  as  great  as  that 
of  the  Susquehanna  or  the  Ohio.  In  addition  to 
these  large  streams  of  water  there  are  thousands  of 
smaller  rivers,  rising  among  the  hills  and  struggling 
through  the  marshes  of  the  low  country,  which 
enrich  the  land  and  furnish  unsurpassed  facilities 
for  transportation.  In  lower  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia  the  network  of  navigable  waters  brings 
every  parish  into  touch  with  Charleston  or  other 
coast  towns.  Farther  west  the  Chattahoochee,  the 
Tombigbee,  the  Yazoo,  the  Mississippi  itself,  the 
Red,  the  Sabine,  the  Trinity,  the  Brazos,  and 
the  Colorado  form  systems  of  communication 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  3 

which  make  it  easy  to  market  all  sorts  of  crops  — 
particularly  cotton,  which  can  be  hauled  profit 
ably  a  hundred  miles  to  the  river  wharves.  It  is 
thus  a  fact  of  great  importance  in  the  study  of 
the  lower  South  that  the  larger  part  of  the  cotton 
region,  somewhat  like  the  tobacco  region  of  colo 
nial  times,  is  within  easy  reach  of  Atlantic  or 
Gulf  ports. 

The  soil  of  the  cotton  belt,  though  not  so  fertile 
as  that  of  the  upper  Mississippi  valley,  was  ex 
ceedingly  productive.  In  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia  it  had  a  reddish  hue  like  that  of  the  Vir 
ginia  up-country;  in  Alabama  and  Mississippi  it 
was  dark  like  that  of  the  prairie  region  of  the 
Middle  West;  and  everywhere  it  was  soft  and  easily 
tillable.  It  produced  corn  as  readily  as  cotton,  but 
wheat  did  not  thrive  on  so  loose  and  open  a  soil. 
The  seasons  were  so  long  that  two  or  often  three 
crops  of  vegetables  were  raised  in  a  year,  with 
the  warm  sun  and  abundant  rains  as  the  benevo 
lent  allies  of  the  farmer.  Peas,  potatoes,  beans, 
and  fruit  could  be  grown  so  quickly  and  abun 
dantly  that  the  problem  of  subsistence  during  the 
Civil  War,  for  example,  was  much  simpler  than 
in  any  of  the  European  countries  fighting  in  the 
Great  War. 


4  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

But  before  the  cotton-planters  overran  the  coun 
try  during  the  two  decades  preceding  the  begin 
ning  of  this  story,  this  area  was  virgin  country  and, 
with  the  exception  of  certain  prairie  districts,  was 
covered  with  dense  forests,  while  its  river-bottoms 
were  still  tangled,  impenetrable  swamps.  And 
even  as  late  as  1860  the  clearing  of  new  lands  was  a 
large  part  of  the  planter's  work.  This  was  done  by 
cutting  away  the  brambles  and  dense  undergrowth 
and  then  "deadening"  the  larger  trees  by  a  process 
of  belting  or  taking  away  the  bark  near  the  ground 
and  thus  preventing  further  growth.  This  clearing 
of  the  forests  let  the  sunlight  fall  upon  the  soil 
and  enabled  the  planter  to  produce  his  first  crop 
at  a  minimum  of  expense.  But  the  tall,  dead 
trees,  from  which  the  winds  tore  off  branches  and 
strewed  them  over  the  ground,  gave  the  country 
side  a  somber,  despoiled  appearance,  and  seemed 
the  skeletons  of  the  monarchs  of  the  forest  cry 
ing  aloud  against  the  desecration  of  nature  and 
the  sheer  waste  of  the  finest  timber  in  the 
world. 

The  immediate  profits  of  cotton-growing  were  so 
much  more  easily  realized  than  the  remote  rewards 
of  conservation  that  the  spoliation  of  timber-lands 
continued  with  a  ruthlessness  unparalleled  elsewhere 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  5 

in  the  world.  Men  became  hardened  to  this  work 
until  the  felling  of  trees  became  a  pastime;  and 
when  there  was  nothing  else  for  slaves  to  do,  they 
were  sent  to  the  "new  grounds"  to  cut  timber 
and  burn  logs  with  the  idea  that  older  land  would 
soon  need  to  be  abandoned  and  the  new  be  added 
to  the  arable  fields.  West  of  South  Carolina  the 
land  was  bought  at  government  sales  at  a  dollar 
and  a  quarter  an  acre  or  was  even  seized  without 
the  formality  of  a  purchase  by  squatters  who 
entered  the  public  domain,  built  their  cabins, 
cleared  patches  of  land,  and  then  defied  the  Federal 
officials  to  oust  them.  The  ease  with  which  one 
might  raise  a  crop  of  cotton  and  the  relatively  large 
returns  which  it  brought  drew  men  of  all  classes 
to  the  lower  South.  Thousands  of  square  miles  of 
rich  lands  within  easy  distance  of  navigable  rivers 
gave  the  people  of  the  region  a  sense  of  new  oppor 
tunity,  a  feeling  that  the  world  belongs  to  him  who 
can  exploit  it,  and  a  restless  craving  for  a  new  life 
and  wide  acres  —  all  of  which  influenced  pro 
foundly  not  only  the  lower  South  but  the  whole 
course  of  American  history.  Between  1820  and 
1850  almost  anything  seemed  possible  to  the  enter 
prising  man  of  the  cotton  country. 

Until  1830  Indian  tribes  held  immense  tracts  in 


6  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Georgia,  Alabama,  and  Mississippi.  The  Chero- 
kees,  the  Creeks,  the  Choctaws,  and  the  Chicka- 
saws  counted  many  thousand  warriors;  they  dwelt 
upon  good  cotton  lands  and,  what  was  worse,  they 
had  been  taught  many  of  the  arts  of  civilization  by 
the  Federal  Government  and  had  been  encouraged 
to  become  orderly  citizens  of  the  United  States. 
This  policy  tended  to  make  of  the  Indian  a  per 
manent  holder  of  his  land;  and  in  many,  many 
instances  these  "wards  of  the  nation"  had  become 
owners  of  good  homes,  masters  of  slaves,  and  suc 
cessful  cotton-planters. 

The  planters  of  Georgia  first,  and  later  those  of 
the  other  States  who  coveted  these  lands  with  a 
covetousness  unimagined  by  the  kingly  exploiter  of 
Naboth's  vineyard  in  ancient  times,  vowed  that 
the  Indians  should  not  be  allowed  to  develop 
settled,  civilized  communities.  Since  the  planters 
were  represented  in  Congress  and  the  natives  had 
recourse  only  to  executive  protection,  the  contest 
was  most  unequal;  and,  when  President  Jackson 
gave  the  Indians  over  to  the  tender  mercies  of  their 
enemies,  there  was  no  help  for  them.  The  planters 
had  their  way,  and  the  Indian  lands  were  rapidly 
converted  into  cotton  plantations.  Pretty  cot 
tages  and  squalid  wigwams,  fertile  fields  and  wild 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  7 

hunting-grounds,  negro  slaves,  horses,  and  farming 
implements  all  had  to  be  sacrificed  without  any 
other  reparation  than  doles  of  money  and  such 
lands  as  the  Indian  could  settle  beyond  the  Red 
River. 

Having  secured  the  vast  area  of  land,  the  plant 
ers  had  then  to  obtain  the  labor  requisite  to  cul 
tivate  their  new  acres.  Between  the  close  of  the 
second  war  with  England  and  the  annexation  of 
Texas  this  problem  solved  itself.  On  the  river- 
bottoms  of  Maryland,  Virginia,  and  North  Caro 
lina,  or  in  the  counties  which  bordered  on  the 
piedmont  region  of  those  States,  there  were  more 
than  a  million  slaves  whose  numbers  doubled  every 
twenty  years.  Since  the  demand  for  tobacco  had 
not  greatly  increased  since  1800,  there  was  no 
profitable  employment  for  these  growing  hordes  of 
blacks.  The  owner  of  slaves  in  this  region  could 
not  move  to  the  up-country  west  of  the  Blue  Ridge, 
for  there  were  no  roads  or  canals  by  which  to  trans 
port  the  wheat  and  corn  which  would  be  his  chief 
crops  in  the  new  country.  If  he  went  still  farther 
west  to  Kentucky  or  Missouri,  he  found  tobacco- 
growing  already  well  past  the  stage  of  profitable 
employment  of  slaves.  There  were  left  the  wide 
prairies  of  Indiana  and  Illinois,  but  as  the  laws  of 


8  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

those  States  did  not  recognize  slavery  the  well-to- 
do  Southerner  could  not  go  there  except  at  the 
sacrifice  of  the  larger  part  of  his  property. 

The  slaveholder  of  the  older  South  might  emi 
grate  to  the  lower  South,  taking  his  negroes  with 
him,  or  he  might  sell  his  servants  and  eke  out  a 
living  for  himself  and  his  family  on  the  old  home 
stead.  It  was  a  hard  choice,  but  it  could  not  well 
be  avoided.  Thousands  emigrated  and  added  their 
numbers  and  wealth  to  the  cotton  belt;  other 
thousands  sold  their  slaves  and  thus  added  to  the 
increasing  volume  of  labor  needed  to  clear  the 
forests  and  grow  the  cotton  crops  of  the  lower 
South.  Year  after  year  masters  and  slaves  found 
their  way  to  the  new  economic  El  Dorado,  and 
year  after  year  the  influence  and  power  of  the 
planters  became  more  evident  to  the  rest  of  the 
country. 

In  the  tobacco  country  or  among  the  foothills  of 
the  older  South  another  and  larger  class  of  people 
found  that  society  was  fast  hardening  around  them 
and  was  compelling  them  to  take  subordinate 
social  stations.  They  likewise  emigrated,  and 
many,  very  many,  of  them  went  to  the  Northwest, 
where  they  "took  up"  lands  and  raised  just 
enough  grain  and  pork  to  sustain  their  families. 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  9 

Even  more  of  them  went  to  Alabama  and  Missis 
sippi,  where  they  obtained  a  small  tract  of  land, 
bought  a  negro  with  their  first  crop  of  cotton,  and 
set  up  as  planters  "on  the  make."  These  pioneers 
became  the  most  resolute  and  uncompromising  of 
all  the  enemies  of  the  Indians  and  the  most  ardent 
advocates  of  the  institution  of  slavery. 

Thus  practically  the  whole  increase  of  the  slave 
and  the  white  population  in  the  older  South  was 
emigrating  and  most  of  it  was  going  to  the  new 
cotton  region.  In  some  counties  of  the  seaboard 
States,  such  as  Virginia,  the  population  decreased 
by  half  in  one  or  two  decades,  and  everywhere  the 
lands  and  houses  of  well-to-do  people  declined  in 
value.  Jefferson's  magnificent  home  sold  in  1829 
for  about  $3000;  Madison  struggled  manfully  but 
in  vain  to  avoid  disposing  of  his  family  servants; 
and  John  Randolph  talked  about  running  away 
from  his  plantation  to  avoid  bankruptcy.  What 
was  the  reason  for  this  state  of  affairs? 

Old  Virginia  and  her  neighbors  were  caught  be 
tween  the  upper  and  the  nether  economic  mill 
stones.  Disavow  it  as  they  would,  their  most 
profitable  product  was  the  slave  who  could  be  sold. 
Negroes  alone  increased  in  value.  It  is  no  wonder 
that  statesmen  of  the  older  South  saw  in  this 


10  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

traffic  a  means  of  rehabilitating  their  declining 
commonwealths. r 

The  census  of  1850  gives  the  lower  South,  in 
cluding  Arkansas,  2,137,000  white  people  and 
1,841,000  blacks,  nearly  all  of  whom  were  slaves  — 
a  total  population  of  nearly  4,000,000.  The  great 
majority  of  whites  lived  in  counties  where  slavery 
had  little  influence;  and  nearly  all  the  slaves  lived 
in  the  cotton  belt,  that  is,  in  the  districts  within 
easy  reach  of  the  rivers.  The  upbuilding  of  this 
region  had  been  accomplished  almost  entirely 
within  thirty  years,  and  the  period  of  rapid  growth 
and  change  had  now  come  to  a  close. 

Practically  all  the  produce  of  these  lower  South 
ern  States  was  exported.  Their  cotton  sold  in 
1850  for  $102,000,000;  their  sugar,  for  $14,800,000; 
and  their  rice,  for  $2,600,000  —  a  total  of  $119,- 
400,000.  The  exports  of  the  whole  country  were 
only  $203,000,000  in  1850,  but  while  the  larger  part 
of  these  exports  thus  originated  in  the  cotton  States, 
less  than  a  fourth  of  all  the  imports  came  through 
Southern  ports.  Charleston,  for  example,  exported 
from  $8,000,000  to  $10,000,000  worth  of  goods 

1  The  lure  of  the  lower  South  drew  also  from  Boston,  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  and  Pittsburgh,  enterprising  and  ambitious  young  men, 
like  Sergeant  Prentiss  and  John  A.  Quitman,  who  in  a  few  years  be 
came  great  planters  and  influential  public  leaders. 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  11 

each  year,  but  imported  scarcely  over  $2,000,000. 
The  balance  of  trade  was  also  against  Mobile  and 
other  Southern  cities.  But  because  nearly  half  the 
people  of  the  cotton  States  were  property,  the  per 
capita  wealth  of  the  planter  was  much  greater 
than  that  of  the  Easterner;  and,  notwithstanding 
the  most  unfavorable  balance  of  trade  against  his 
section,  he  made  great  display  of  his  wealth. 

Rapidly  increasing  wealth  makes  one  hunger  the 
more  for  still  greater  wealth  and  a  wider  area  for 
one's  operations.  Even  before  the  Indians  had  all 
moved  across  the  Mississippi,  the  planters  began 
a  most  vigorous  campaign  for  the  annexation 
of  Texas.  From  New  Orleans,  Vicksburg,  and 
Natchez,  from  Mobile  and  Montgomery,  even  from 
Charleston  and  Savannah,  adventurous  men  and 
prospective  planters  hurried  into  the  disputed 
region,  took  up  lands,  and  began  the  cultivation 
of  cotton  and  the  importation  of  slaves  from  the 
older  South.  They  were  winning  for  the  United 
States  a  new  and  promising  empire.  With  equal 
zest  and  enthusiasm  men  from  Tennessee,  Ken 
tucky,  and  Missouri  hastened  to  join  their  South 
ern  brethren  and  to  help  them  wrest  the  coveted 
province  from  the  hand  of  Mexico.  The  Revolu 
tion  of  1836  brought  independence  to  the  Republic 


12  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

of  Texas  and  eventually  annexation  to  the  Amet 
ican  Union,  through  a  coalition  of  Southern  and 
Western  party  groups.  The  Mexican  War  followed, 
and  still  other  vast  areas  of  land  were  annexed  to 
the  United  Sta-tes.  What  cotton-planters  wanted, 
Congress  somehow  found  a  way  to  grant. 

Nor  was  the  case  wholly  different  in  the  greater 
matter  of  the  national  tariff.  When,  in  1828,  the 
South  and  the  West  united  to  place  Jackson  in  the 
President's  chair,  it  was  definitely  understood  that 
the  "tariff  of  abominations"  was  to  be  abolished 
or  greatly  reduced.  The  exigencies  of  national 
politics  caused  Jackson  to  falter  and  delay.  South 
Carolina  allowed  the  new  President  four  years  to 
make  up  his  mind.  When  he  was  still  uncertain  in 
1832,  that  State  proceeded  to  nullify  the  offensive 
national  statute;  the  President  then  threatened  war; 
South  Carolina  thereupon  paused;  but  the  outcome 
was  the  definite  abandonment  of  the  higher  tariff 
policy  in  favor  of  the  lower  rates  of  the  compromise 
tariff  of  1833.  Every  South  Carolinian  thought 
that  the  planters  had  once  again  had  their  way; 
and  South  Carolinians  were  scattered  over  all  the 
cotton  States. 

i/      If  ever  people  were  taught  to  believe  themselves 
invincible  in  politics,  it  was  the  people  of  the  cotton 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  13 

country  during  the  two  decades  which  preceded 
1850.  A  vast  region  of  rich  cotton  lands  had  been 
rapidly  opened  up  to  them;  the  natives  had  been 
driven  beyond  the  distant  Red  River;  a  new  State 
embracing  more  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou 
sand  square  miles  had  been  annexed;  and  the 
protective  tariff  policy  by  which  Eastern  manu 
facturers  sought  to  possess  the  American  markets 
free  from  competition  had  been  abandoned.  Why 
then  might  not  the  gentleman  of  the  lower  South 
boast  of  his  growing  riches  and  of  his  control  of^ 

national  affairs? 
-^V-* '  \L'  v."  v  "v_- 

The  lower  South  had  been  and  still  was  an 
outwardly  irreligious,  dram-drinking,  and  dueling 
section.  The  French  priests  had  built  a  compact 
religious  community  in  and  about  New  Orleans, 
but  they  had  not  pushed  this  work  up  the  rivers 
and  out  into  the  great  stretches  of  country  where 
plantation  life  was  dominant.  Nor  was  their  easy 
going  moral  system  entirely  adapted  to  the  needs 
of  rural  life.  The  cathedral  church,  the  monastery, 
and  the  parochial  schools  filled  the  round  of  the 
priest's  life  and  duties.  The  saving  of  souls  in 
distant  plantations  was  not  his  especial  concern. 
Dueling  and  card-playing  and  horse-racing  were 


14  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

not  beyond  the  range  of  his  own  interests;  why 
should  he  stir  up  a  crusade  against  them?  The 
faith  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  was,  therefore, 
comparatively  stagnant  in  the  lower  South.  Aside 
from  a  few  churches  in  Louisiana  and  Charleston, 
firmly  established  parishes  in  Mobile,  and  a  diocese 
in  Florida,  this  branch  of  the  Christian  Church 
had  not  become  a  force  in  the  planter  civilization. 
If  the  founders  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
in  the  lower  South  were  content  to  let  the  planters 
go  their  own  way  and  to  confine  their  activities  to 
the  larger  towns,  the  builders  of  the  Church  of  Eng 
land  were  no  more  enterprising.  They  established 
their  churches  in  Charleston,  Savannah,  and  other 
towns,  and  set  up  chapels  of  ease  in  the  outlying 
parishes  —  half-way  houses,  as  it  were,  to  the  true 
church  in  the  city  —  but  they  were  not  consumed 
with  zeal  to  save  the  lost  souls  of  the  hordes  of 
men  who  filled  up  the  back  country.  Gambling 
and  horse-racing  and  card-playing  were  to  the 
Anglican  clergy  what  they  were  to  the  Catholic 
priests,  a  means  of  hastening  weary  hours  away. 
Even  dueling  among  vestrymen  of  high  standing 
was  not  to  them  one  of  the  crimes  to  be  denounced 
from  the  pulpit.  They  condoned  slavery  at  first 
and  later  proclaimed  it  God's  way  of  saving  the 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  15 

souls  of  the  heathen.  Good  sermons  were  indeed 
read  on  Sabbath  days  in  the  churches  of  Charles 
ton  and  the  other  cities,  and  many  charities  occu 
pied  the  attention  of  the  Episcopalians  of  the 
lower  South;  but  these  gentle  ministrations  did 
not  affect  the  red-blooded  men  and  women  who 
were  building  in  the  open  country  the  foundations 
of  a  great  section  of  the  American  Union. 

Men  of  the  cotton  country  might  live  freely,  ; 
might  partake  of  the  joys  of  this  world,  and  might 
even  deny  the  fundamentals  of  the  Christian  faith 
without  feeling  that  everlasting  penance  must  be 
done  in  the  world  to  come.  Nor  was  there  great 
religious  or  social  scruple  if  aristocratic  blood  ran 
in  negro  veins  or  if  fine  young  gentlemen  kept  half- 
breed  mistresses.  Only  one  must  not  bring  one's 
hybrid  offspring  to  Mardi  Gras  or  seat  them  with 
the  family  in  the  cathedral  church  in  New  Or 
leans  or  St.  Michael's  in  Charleston.  Men  drank 
the  best  and  oldest  wines  of  France  till  they  were 
wholly  drunk;  they  built  the  best  of  theaters  and 
engaged  troupes  of  actors  from  England  whose  repu 
tations  for  immorality  would  have  scandalized  all 
New  England;  they  even  lured  assemblies  of  clergy 
men  to  witness  their  races  and  take  chances  on 
their  steeds.  There  was  thus  an  un-Puritan  and 


16  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

continental  sort  of  life  in  the  older  communities 
of  the  young  cotton  kingdom  which  was  in  time 
wholly  to  disappear. 

Another  vanishing  social  group  consisted  of  the 
high  English  gentry  whose  grandfathers  had  been 
received  at  the  Court  of  St.  James  in  the  days  of 
the  Georges  or  who  had  chased  the  famous  Black- 
beard  or  who  had  even  turned  sea-robbers  them 
selves.  They,  too,  had  made  their  fortunes  in  the 
unsettled  eighteenth  century;  but  in  the  decades 
which  preceded  1850  they  were  fast  disappearing 
from  among  the  increasing  numbers  of  cotton- 
planters.  They  had  spread  themselves  over  the 
lands  of  South  Carolina,  built  their  houses  far  in 
land,  and  mingled  their  blood  with  people  of  less 
aristocratic  mold.  The  Pinckneys,  the  Rhetts, 
and  the  Petigrus  were  merged  into  the  new  aris 
tocracy  of  the  country,  although  they  still  owned 
houses  in  Charleston,  held  pews  in  the  oldest 
churches,  and  made  a  fetish  of  their  St.  Cecilia 
Society,  into  whose  sacred  precincts  unhallowed 
feet  seldom  dared  to  tread.  By  the  middle  of  the 
century  it  was  not  so  much  the  State  of  South 
Carolina  that  drew  out  the  loyalty  and  devotion 
of  the  planter  aristocracy;  the  building  of  a  new 
economic  and  social  order  based  on  an  enlarged 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  1? 

planter  group  occupied  men's  thoughts  and  pur 
poses  in  much  the  same  way  that  the  spread  of 
Kultur  has  become  the  mission  of  the  Pan-German 
party  of  our  day.  South  Carolina  contributed 
most  to  the  making  of  that  lower  South  which  was 
to  dominate  so  large  a  part  of  the  national  thought 
in  the  two  decades  before  the  Civil  War. 

An  important  racial  element  was  contributed  to 
the  life  of  South  Carolina  by  the  French  Hugue 
nots  of  high  intellectual  endowment  and  even  liter 
ary  culture  whose  ancestors  had  driven  in  family 
coaches  and  had  read  good  books  for  three  genera 
tions.  Unsurpassed  in  commercial  pursuits,  they 
heaped  up  fortunes  which  made  their  names 
known  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  during  the 
Revolution  and  the  decades  which  followed  the 
adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution.  But  aris 
tocratic  groups  seldom  maintain  themselves.  The 
Huguenots  were  fast  merging  into  the  planter- 
lawyer  class,  and  when  cotton  became  king  in  the 
South,  their  quaint  accent  was  about  all  that  re 
mained  to  mark  them  as  a  race  apart. 

In  New  Orleans  were  old  French  families  dating 
back  to  the  days  of  the  Grand  Monarque  himself, 
who  had  houses  on  St.  Charles,  Royal,  or  Toulouse 
street,  owned  plantations  on  the  river  or  offices 


18  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

on  Canal  Street,  and  attended  French  opera  in  the 
evening.  Their  wealth  was  invested  in  slaves  or 
sugar  or  cotton;  their  quaint  old  coaches  were  seen 
along  the  Strand  or  the  Esplanade;  and  their  chil 
dren  took  dancing  lessons  with  French  masters 
who  showed  both  young  and  old  what  was  good 
form  in  France. 

So  many  Spaniards  had  come  into  the  colony 
during  the  Spanish  rule  and  so  many  English  roy 
alists  from  Revolutionary  America  that  society 
was  wonderfully  mixed  in  New  Orleans.  All 
nationalities,  including  Germans  and  Italians, 
entered  into  the  life  of  the  lower  Mississippi.  And 
there  were  many  Creoles  with  the  blood  of  several 
races  in  their  veins.  Octoroons  and  half-breeds 
and  pure  blacks  made  up  the  free  negro  population, 
which  had  a  life  of  its  own  unlike  that  in  any  other 
city  in  the  country.  Some  negroes  were  gentlemen 
with  a  standing  amongst  other  gentlemen  which 
would  scandalize  good  Southerners  of  today.  In 
New  Orleans  as  in  Charleston,  there  were  negro 
owners  of  slaves  who  played  a  considerable  part 
in  the  civic  life,  were  among  the  stanchest  de 
fenders  of  slavery  as  an  institution,  and  were 
bitterly  opposed  to  all  who  talked  of  setting  free 
their  slaves. 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IK  1850  19 

Outwardly  New  Orleans  was  the  most  European 
of  all  American  cities  in  1850,  and  its  music,  litera 
ture,  and  manners  were  European  quite  as  much 
as  American.  But  the  tone  was  changing.  Hill- 
house  and  Story,  Slocomb  and  Eustis,  were  names 
of  families  that  did  not  remind  one  of  either  France 
or  Spain.  And  there  were  many  street  names  that 
bespoke  the  influence  of  the  Yankees  who  had 
long  ruled  the  city  with  a  strange  lack  of  reverence 
for  old  things  and  old  times.  New  Orleans  was 
definitely  passing  from  the  epoch  of  Catholic  and 
fur-trading  supremacy  to  that  of  Protestantism 
and  cotton.  Dr.  Clapp,  the  great  Boston  preacher, 
and  General  Gaines,  the  hero  of  many  battles, 
were  the  visible  evidences  of  a  new  era ;  yet  it  must 
be  recognized  that  French  influence  contributed 
much  that  was  valuable  to  the  plantation  system. 

The  hills  of  North  Carolina,  Virginia,  and  Ten 
nessee  reared  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of 
plain,  poor  folk  who  made  the  bone  and  sinew  of 
the  lower  South.  They  knew  nothing  of  the  gentle 
ways  of  Charleston  or  of  the  French  manners  of 
New  Orleans.  They  built  their  cabins  all  over  the 
up-country  from  what  is  now  Charlotte  to  Atlanta; 
they  overran  northern  Alabama  and  the  Tombigbee 
Valley;  and  they  "took  up"  lands  in  Mississippi 


£0  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

and  Louisiana.  It  was  they  who  made  by  far 
the  larger  part  of  the  new  country.  While  the 
older  Virginians  brought  with  them  their  slaves 
and  their  good  middle-class  manners,  and  while 
the  gentry  of  Charleston  and  New  Orleans  boasted 
of  their  families  and  their  culture,  these  people  ad 
hered  firmly  to  their  stern  Presbyterian  faith  or  to 
the  warmer  religious  emotionalism  of  the  Baptists 
and  Methodists. 

To  be  sure,  many  of  these  settlers  from  the 
poorer  districts  of  the  older  South  were  not  saints 
or  of  the  stuff  of  which  saints  are  made,  but  there 
were  enough  of  the  earnest  and  devout  to  make 
the  salt  for  the  saving  of  the  whole  social  lump. 
Slowly  these  elements  were  merged  with  the  older 
order,  learned  somewhat  of  the  elegance  and  form 
which  made  the  Carolina  and  Louisiana  stocks  so 
attractive,  and  contributed  the  largest  element  to 
the  new  society  which  the  world  always  associates 
with  cotton  and  slavery. 

For  the  moment  a  good  deal  of  the  religious 
inheritance  from  Jonathan  Edwards,  Whitefield, 
and  Wesley,  which  the  "new  light"  preachers  had 
delivered  to  the  poorer  white  people  of  the  South, 
was  lost  in  the  migration  to  the  cotton  country. 
The  frontier  has  always  been  indifferent  to  formal 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  21 

religion.  The  free  life  of  the  forest,  the  conflict 
with  the  Indians,  and  the  struggle  with  nature 
tended  to  make  men  forget  the  catechism  and 
the  hymnal.  Nor  did  the  easy-going  manners  of 
the  older  planters,  the  horses,  the  hounds,  and  the 
illicit  loves  with  squaws  and  negro  women,  stiffen 
the  backbone  of  personal  morality.  An  affair  of 
honor,  a  duel  which  always  followed  the  slightest 
insult  among  men  of  family,  was  attractive  to  men 
who  were  just  climbing  to  the  higher  rungs  of  the 
social  ladder;  and  where  law  and  social  solidarity 
developed  slowly  these  newer  men  quickly  learned 
to  defend  themselves,  to  be  the  avengers  of  their 
own  and  their  family's  wrongs.  Every  man  carried 
his  weapon  in  his  pocket  and  he  was  not  slow  to  use 
it.  Public  gatherings  were  not  the  safest  places  for 
men  of  hot  tempers. 

And  where  the  weather  at  all  seasons  was  open, 
court  days,  barbecues,  and  even  religious  gather 
ings,  not  infrequently  were  the  scenes  of  encounters 
between  gentlemen  and  of  fisticuffs  between  men 
of  lower  degree.  Feuds  and  lawsuits  were  en 
gendered  and  prolonged  to  the  great  satisfaction  of 
lawyers  and  hangers-on  of  the  courts.  To  these 
occasions  of  legal  conflict  were  added  the  myriad 
suits  about  land  titles  and  preemption  claims  which 


22  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

gave  sustenance  to  a  host  of  attorneys.  Where 
money  came  easily  it  went  easily.  Sergeant  Pren- 
tiss,  a  New  England  lawyer-orator  of  the  first 
importance  in  the  cotton  kingdom,  received  a  fee 
of  $50,000  for  the  conduct  of  a  single  case  in  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Mississippi ;  and  Reuben  Davis 
became  a  state-wide  hero  in  the  defense  of  an 
acknowledged  murderer. 

As  one  reviews  these  elements  and  forces  that 
entered  into  the  make-up  of  the  lower  South  in 
1850,  it  becomes  plain  that  this  was  a  region  of 
immense  potentiality.  Its  great  waterfalls  might 
run  the  wheels  of  many  thousand  industrial  plants, 
if  Southerners  ever  turned  their  minds  in  the  di 
rection  of  manufacturing.  Its  fertile  lands  might 
feed  cattle  enough  to  supply  the  whole  national 
demand  for  meat.  Its  harbors  were  ample  for 
large  fleets  of  ocean-going  vessels.  The  people 
who  had  rushed  in,  dispossessed  the  native  In 
dians,  cleared  the  lands,  became  planters,  estab 
lished  commonwealths,  and  sent  spokesmen  to 
Congress,  were  native  Americans,  with  rare  excep 
tions.  They  were  tobacco  farmers  from  the  older 
South,  poor  whites  from  all  the  Atlantic  States, 
Carolina  gentlemen,  French  settlers  in  Louisiana, 


THE  LOWER  SOUTH  IN  1850  23 

and  Scotch-Irish  farmers  from  the  mountain  dis 
tricts  of  Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  and  Virginia. 
The  German  element,  which  had  formed  so  large 
a  part  of  the  Southern  population  at  the  time  of 
the  Revolution,  could  be  detected  only  in  proper 
names  here  and  there  and  in  an  occasional  Verein. 
Their  language,  manners,  and  religion  had  nearly 
everywhere  given  way  to  the  dominant  Anglo- 
Saxon  civilization.  The  lower  South  was  a  region 
of  vast  opportunity  but  of  wavering  democratic 
faith;  it  was  a  region  of  American  traditions,  except 
in  its  growing  devotion  to  slavery.  If  its  political 
and  social  leaders  should  succeed  in  uniting  all  its 
groups,  in  moderating  its  growing  ambitions,  and 
in  educating  its  great  mass  of  illiterate  people,  it 
must  of  necessity  become  one  of  the  greatest  sec 
tions  of  the  United  States  and  dictate  to  a  large 
extent  the  course  of  national  history.  Would  these 
conditions  be  adequately  met?  Was  it  possible  for 
the  planters  to  develop  the  wisest  counsels? 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  RISE   OF   THE   COTTON    MAGNATES 

THE  amalgamation  of  the  various  elements  and 
forces  of  the  population  which  composed  the 
cotton  States  in  1850  was  strikingly  paralleled  by 
the  rapid  concentration  of  economic  power  in  three 
or  four  thousand  families  who  lived  on  the  best 
lands  and  received  three-fourths  of  the  returns 
from  the  yearly  exports.  Two-thirds  of  the  white 
people  of  the  South  had  no  connection  with  slavery 
and  received  only  a  very  small  part  of  the  returns 
of  the  community  output.  A  thousand  families 
received  over  $50,000,000  a  year,  while  all  the 
remaining  666,000  families  received  only  about 
$60,000,000.  While  these  figures  do  not  show  such 
extreme  concentration  of  wealth  in  a  few  hands  as 
the  facts  of  our  own  day  disclose,  they  do  neverthe 
less  reveal  a  dangerous  tendency. 

Though  there  was  some  discontent  even  in  the 
South  at  this  menace  of  concentrated  wealth,  no 
effort  was  made  to  limit  the  size  of  men's  fortunes. 

24 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  25 

The  tendency  was  to  divide  the  great  numbers  of 
slaves  owned  by  one  master  into  plantation  groups 
of  something  like  a  hundred  each.  A  thousand 
acres  of  land  and  a  hundred  slaves  made  a  unit 
which  was  regarded  as  the  most  productive;  but 
one  man  might  own  ten  such  units  and  never 
be  made  to  bear  inheritance  or  super-taxes.  The 
Hairstons  owned  as  many  as  1700  slaves  dis 
tributed  over  plantations  in  Virginia,  Alabama, 
and  Mississippi;  Howell  Cobb  of  Georgia  was 
pointed  out  as  the  master  of  a  thousand  negroes; 
while  the  Aikens  of  South  Carolina  and  Joseph 
Davis  (brother  of  Jefferson  Davis)  of  Mississippi 
were  counted  as  millionaires. 

There  was  something  factitious  about  the  grow 
ing  wealth  of  the  greaJLjaasJ^rs.  The  number  of 
slaves  owned  was  believed  to  be  an  index  of  wealth. 
The  greater  the  number  of  slaves  one  owned,  the 
greater  one's  riches;  and  the  number  of  slaves 
increased  rapidly,  even  in  the  cotton  belt.  As 
fortune  would  have  it,  the  price  of  cotton  tended 
to  rise  during  the  period  of  1845  to  1860.  This  rise 
in  prices  added  a  hundred  per  cent  to  the  value  of 
land,  and  it  also  added  nearly  a  hundred  per  cent 
to  the  value  of  each  slave.  A  cotton-planter  had 
only  to  be  a  kind  master  and  a  reasonably  good 


26  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

manager,  or  employ  good  overseers,  and  he  could 
not  avoid  the  rapid  accumulation  of  wealth.  He 
simply  grew  rich. 

The  rising  price  of  cotton  naturally  increased 
the  output  of  the  plantations  and  gave  the  owners 
of  slaves  a  sense  of  security  which  they  had  not 
known  in  the  older  South  for  fifty  years.  Be 
tween  1850  and  1860  the  annual  cotton  crop  in 
creased  from  2,500,000  to  5,000,000  bales,  and  thus 
more  than  doubled  the  wealth  of  the  planters. 
What  exaggerated  the  situation  was  the  fact  that 
these  huge  crops  did  not  meet  the  demands  of 
European  and  New  England  mills.  Thus^every 
way  one  turned,  the  fortunes  of  the  cotton-growers 
increased  and  the  difficulties  of  regulating  or  limit 
ing  the  evil  of  slavery  increased.  Here  seems  to  be 
an  illustration  of  the  saying  that  prosperity  is 
quite  as  unfortunate  in  its  effects  as  poverty. 

Every  year  added  to  the  wealth  of  him  who  had 
and  seemed  to  take  away  from  him  who  had  not. 
A  healthy  negro  man  was  worth  in  1845  about 
$750;  in  1860  the  same  slave,  although  fifteen  years 
older,  was  worth  in  the  market  a  third  more,  and  a 
young  negro  man  or  woman  readily  sold  for  $1500. z 

1  New  Orleans  Picayune,  August  8,  1858:  "Seven  slaves  were  sold 
by  the  sheriff  yesterday,  without  guarantee,  at  an  average  of  $1,538." 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  27 

There  was  no  help  for  it.  Economic  laws  concen 
trated  the  wealth  of  the  South  in  the  cotton  region. 
Owners  of  slaves,  as  we  have  already  seen,  did  not 
like  to  sell  their  servants,  but  they  did  sell  them 
under  these  circumstances,  and  there  was  a  con 
stant  stream  of  unwilling  slave  emigration  from 
the  tobacco  country  to  the  lower  South.  Cotton 
proved  to  be  the  irresistible  magnet.  It  was  doubt 
less  these  conditions  which  moved  Lincoln  to  make 
his  remarkable  statement  of  1854  that  he  did  not 
know  what  to  do  about  slavery:  "I  surely  will  not 
blame  them  for  not  doing  what  I  should  not  know 


how  to  do  myself.  If  all  earthly  power  were  given 
me,  I  should  not  know  what  to  do  as  to  the  existing 
institution."1 

But  while  the  great  planters  were  undoubtedly  , 
absorbing  a  disproportionate  part  of  the  wealth  of 
the  South,  and  while  economic  conditions  were 
daily  making  more  difficult  the  problem  of  the 
statesman  who  really  loved  the  country,  much  if 
not  most  of  this  outward  wealth  found  its  way  out 
of  the  cotton  region.  Leading  Southern  towns  ex- 
ported  annually  three  or  four  times  as  much  as 
they  imported.  New  York,  on  the  other  hand,  im 
ported  twice  as  much  as  she  exported.  Each  year 

1  The  Peoria  Speech  of  October  4,  1854. 


28  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

$100,000,000  worth  of  foreign  goods  came  into  the 
United  States  through  her  custom-house,  while 
only  $50,000,000  worth  went  out  that  way.  The 
same  thing  was  true  of  Philadelphia  and  Boston. 
The  cotton-planters,  with  their  wide-spread  fields 
and  their  troops  of  negro  laborers,  were  buying 
the  bulk  of  their  goods  in  the  North  and  selling 
the  whole  of  their  output  either  to  Europe  or  to  the 
North  at  prices  fixed  in  the  world  market.  The 
merchants  of  New  York,  Boston,  and  Philadelphia 
thus  reaped  enormous  profits. 

In  the  realm  of  finance  and  banking  there  was  a 
still  stronger  limitation  upon  the  concentration  of 
the  profits  of  the  cotton  industry  in  the  lower  South. 
Men  were  chiefly  interested  in  supplying  their  daily 
necessities  from  their  own  plantations,  and  the  only 
commercial  goods  which  they  used  were  purchased 
from  the  North.  As  a  result  the  planters  paid  little 
attention  to  matters  of  banking  and  credit.  Al 
though  New  Orleans  was  one  of  the  greatest  export 
ing  cities  in  the  country,  the  amount  of  money  on 
deposit  in  her  banks  was  insignificant.  Less  than  a 
third  of  the  returns  on  the  cotton  which  annually 
left  her  docks  ever  found  place  in  her  financial 
institutions.  On  the  other  hand,  New  York  or 
Philadelphia  always  had  on  deposit  more  money 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  29 

than  the  total  value  of  her  exports.  What  was 
true  of  New  Orleans  was  true  of  the  cotton  belt  as 
a  whole.  Though  the  cotton,  rice,  and  sugar  of 
the  South  sold  for  $119,400,000  in  1850,  the  total 
bank  deposits  of  the  region  amounted  to  only  some 
$20,000,000.  Ten  years  later,  when  the  value  of 
the  crops  had  increased  to  more  than  $200,000,000, 
less  than  $30,000,000  were  deposited  in  the  banks 
of  the  cotton  and  sugar  belt. 

Nor  was  it  different  in  the  matter  of  loans  or 
specie  or  banking  capital.  While  agricultural  pro 
duction  was  concentrated  in  the  comparatively 
small  area  where  cotton  could  be  grown  and  the 
returns  all  seemed  to  be  going  to  the  planters,  the 
evidence  is  conclusive  that  far  the  greater  part  of 
the  proceeds  was  left  in  the  hands  of  those  who 
supplied  the  South  with  its  necessaries  and  its 
luxuries.  The  earnings  of  the  slave  plantations'* 
were  thus  consumed  by  tariffs,  freights,  com 
missions,  and  profits  which  the  Southerners  had  to 
pay.  Southern  towns  were  only  marts  of  trade, 
not  depositories  of  the  crops  of  surrounding  or  j 
distant  areas.  Thus  while  the  planters  monopq-  * 
lized  the  cotton  industry,  drew  to  themselves  the ;., 
surplus  of  slaves,  and  apparently  increased  their 
wealth  enormously,  they  were  really  but  custodians 


30  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

of  these  returns,  administrators  of  the  wealth  of 
Northern  men  who  really  ultimately  received  the 
profits  of  Southern  plantations  and  Southern 
slavery. 

some  planters  saw  this  dangerous  tendency 
and  sought  frantically  to  check  it,  the  majority  of 
men  were  oblivious  of  it  and  endeavored  to  emu 
late  the  delusive  riches  of  the  great  planters.  The 
small  farmer,  the  tenant,  and  the  piney-woods 
squatter,  so  well  described  by  Frederick  Law  Olm- 
sted,  *  all  contributed  to  the  power  and  prestige  of 
the  industrial  leaders.  They  produced  but  little 
surplus  —  a  bale  of  cotton,  a  little  fresh  beef  or 
pork,  poultry,  and  eggs.  This  produce  they 
carried  on  ox-carts  or  rickety  wagons  drawn  by 
poverty-stricken  horses  to  the  nearest  plantation 
towns  and  bought  in  exchange  a  New  England 
bonnet  for  the  wife,  New  England  shoes  for  the 
husband  and  sons,  or  a  little  coffee  or  molasses  for 
the  family  table.  Although  these  people  rarely 
became  members  of  the  privileged  order,2  they 
were  closely  bound  to  it,  tributary  in  their  small 
way  to  the  great  planter  aristocracy. 

1  Olmsted,  Frederick  Law,  A  Journey  in  the  Seaboard  Slave  States, 
New  York,  1856;  A  Journey  in  the  Back  Country,  New  York,  1860. 

2  Hiram  G.  Runnels  of  Mississippi,  who  rose  to  be  Governor  in 
1836,  belonged  to  this  class. 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  31 

Another  class  of  Southerners  contributed  in 
similar  manner  to  the  master  group.  They  were 
the  so-called  "crackers"  or  "hill-billies"  of  north 
ern  Georgia  and  north-central  Alabama,  and  the 
poorer  whites  who  dwelt  on  the  semibarren  lands 
which  the  planters  refused  to  cultivate  or  had 
worn  out  by  their  reckless  methods  of  cultivation. 
They  sometimes  owned  a  few  slaves,  made  a  score 
of  bales  of  cotton,  and  raised  some  wheat  and  corn 
for  the  planter  market.  Their  net  returns  amounted 
to  $100  or  $200  per  year  and  their  homes  bore  a 
somewhat  better  aspect  than  did  the  cabins  of  the 
piney-woods  people.  The  great  majority  of  South 
ern  whites  belonged  to  these  classes.  They  lived 
on  the  poorer  lands  in  the  cotton  belt  —  on  the 
hills  that  border  the  lower  reaches  of  the  Appala 
chian  Mountains  or  on  the  sandy  ridges  of  Lou 
isiana  and  Texas.  They  were  the  inarticulate 
masses.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  Andrew 
Johnson,  twice  Governor  of  Tennessee,  or  Joseph 
E.  Brown  of  Georgia,  the  inveterate  enemy  of 
Jefferson  Davis  during  the  Civil  War,  they  might 
rise  to  power  and  influence,  but  the  great  masses 
of  them  could  hardly  hope  to  see  better  days. 

Like  the  piney-woods  men,  the  farmers  and  ten 
ants  of  the  hills  were  all  dependents  of  their  greater 


32  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

neighbors,  willing  hangers-on  of  a  system  which, 
if  they  but  knew  it,  could  give  them  no  promise  of 
better  things.  The  reasons  for  this  dependency 
were  two:  many  of  these  ne'er-do-wells  were  but 
the  distant  cousins  of  the  rich,  the  cast-offs  of  the 
fast-growing  cotton  aristocracy;  many  others  were 
prospective  planters,  hopeful  that  they  or  their 
sons  might  migrate  to  some  new  cotton  region 
with  a  little  store  of  savings,  preempt  a  tract  of 
government  land,  buy  a  slave  or  two,  and  set  up 
as  planters.  It  was  from  such  classes  in  Virginia 
or  the  Carolinas  that  many,  if  not  the  majority, 
of  the  great  cotton-planters  had  come.  The  lower 
South  was  as  yet  too  big  for  these  farmers  and 
tenants  to  entertain  and  nurse  the  hopeless  envy 
that  cankers  our  own  industrial  life.  They  were 
not  altogether  contented;  but  they  were  far  from 
dangerous.  Moreover  the  planters  were  a  demo 
cratic  folk  in  their  manners.  They  were  too  near 
the  poor  in  point  of  time  and  descent  to  hold  their 
heads  as  high  as  their  social  prestige  might  have 
tempted  them  to.  They  endeavored  consciously 
to  make  and  keep  friends  with  their  poorer  neigh 
bors  —  for  these  neighbors  had  the  ballot.  They 
were  the  "freemen  "  to  whom  every  returning  mem 
ber  of  Congress  must  make  his  appeal  against 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  33 

Yankee  tariffs  and  Yankee  abolitionists;  and  their 
votes  had  made  possible  the  annexation  of  Texas 
and  the  war  with  Mexico,  by  which  the  power  and 
even  the  riches  of  the  planters  had  been  greatly 
increased.  The  lower  South  was  a  social  unit  ex 
cept  for  the  poor  slave,  of  whom  our  knowledge 
comes  only  through  the  writings  of  his  master. 

The  two  millions  of  blacks  on  whose  sturdy 
shoulders  this  kingdom  of  cotton  was  securely 
fastened  were  inexorably  bound  to  the  system. 
Willingly  or  unwillingly,  they  increased  its  soli 
darity  and  lent  enchantment  to  the  life  of  the 
planter.  They  boasted  of  the  limitless  lands  of 
their  masters,  of  the  incomparable  horses  of  "oF 
massa,"  of  the  riches  of  "oF  massa's"  table  and 
the  elegancies  of  "oF  massa's  great  house."  What 
their  inmost  thoughts  were  is  not  likely  ever  to  be 
known.  They  certainly  produced  the  greater  part 
of  the  cotton  and  sugar  of  the  South;  they  dis 
liked  the  whites  who  did  not  own  slaves;  and  they 
were  even  more  cordially  disliked  by  those  same 
whites.  And  this  mutual  dislike  tendedjto  fasten 
the  bonds  of  slavery  more  closely  and  to  prevent 
any  rift  between  the  planters  and  their  less  for 
tunate  white  brethren  by  keeping  the  slaves  loyal 
to  their  masters  and  by  deterring  the  poor  whites 


34  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

from  sympathizing  with  any  abolitionist  move- 
jnent.  Every  class  of  Southern  society,  therefore, 
was  disposed  to  lend  power  and  influence  to  the 
owner  of  great  plantations,  save  only  a  bare  rem 
nant  of  mountaineers  who  were  too  remote  to  feel 
the  kinship  of  the  masters  or  the  racial  antipathies 
between  lowland  whites  and  blacks. 

The  ancestors  of  these  mountaineers  were  the 
pioneers  of  Revolutionary  times  who  had  pressed 
into  the  mountains  of  Alabama,  Georgia,  and  even 
South  Carolina,  men  of  tough  fiber  and  hardy 
natures,  men  who  bore  some  of  the  best  colonial 
names.  There  in  the  mountains  they  had  re 
mained.  Their  ideals  were  still  those  of  1776,  and 
their  practices  were  those  of  social  and  economic 
equality.  To  them  the  Declaration  of  Indepen 
dence  was  a  reality  and  Thomas  Jefferson  the 
greatest  man  of  all  history  save  one.  They  lived 
in  isolated  valleys,  on  the  sides  of  fertile  mountains, 
or  on  the  banks  of  roaring  streams.  They  spent  a 
great  part  of  their  lives  in  hunting  and  fishing, 
and  they  distilled  their  corn  and  fruits  into  strong 
liquors  just  as  the  western  Pennsylvanians  had 
done  in  the  time  of  Washington.  They  did  not 
like  the  great  planters;  and  their  leaders  in  the  vari 
ous  legislatures  were  often  courageous  opponents 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  35 

of  the  plantation  system.  But  they  were  too  few 
to  impede  the  course  of  events.  They  were  way 
ward  obstacles  in  the  path  of  progress,  mere  an 
noyances  of  the  great  ones  of  earth.  Their  cultural 
isolation  was  complete. 

The  roads  that  led  into  the  mountain  districts 
that  these  men  inhabited  were  very  poor,  often 
mere  bridle-paths.  The  great  roadways  had  left 
the  mountaineers  undisturbed,  for  they  connected 
one  river  settlement  with  another.  The  more 
important  of  these  roads  passed  from  the  older 
South  through  Camden  and  Columbia  to  Augusta 
and  Savannah,  or  through  Charlotte,  Greenville, 
Atlanta,  and  Montgomery.  A  highway  known 
far  and  wide  was  that  which  passed  from  Louis 
ville  through  Nashville  into  Alabama  at  Hunts- 
ville  on  the  Tennessee  River,  and  thence  over  the 
mountains  to  Montgomery  and  Mobile.  A  branch 
of  this  road  set  off  from  Nashville  toward  Mem 
phis,  whence  it  ran  parallel  to  the  Yazoo  River, 
and  so  on  to  Natchez.  All  this  Alabama  and 
Mississippi  region  was,  of  course,  connected  with 
Louisiana  and  Texas  by  similar  highways  which 
passed  through  Memphis  and  Vicksburg.  It  is 
therefore  clear  that  all  important  roads  led  to  the 
great  cotton  districts. 


36  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Jhis  tapping  of  the  cotton  belt  was  also  carried 
on  by  the  railroads  which  were  built  during  the  two 
or  three  decades  preceding  the  Civil  War.  The 
mother-road  of  all  was  the  Charleston  and  Augusta 
Railway,  which  was  the  first  to  tap  the  Georgia 
cotton  belt.  Another  and  more  important  railway 
was  projected  from  Augusta  to  Atlanta  and  thence 
to  western  Georgia  and  Montgomery.  An  exten 
sion  of  this  road  was  then  built  to  Chattanooga 
and  thence  to  Memphis,  thus  binding  together  the 
Tennessee  valley  and  the  cotton  belts  of  Georgia 
and  South  Carolina,  with  an  outlet  to  the  sea 
at  Charleston.  Another  railway  was  built  from 
Savannah  to  Macon,  Georgia,  and  thence  to  Mont 
gomery,  with  offshoots  into  the  fertile  cotton 
counties  on  either  side.  Thus  two  systems  con 
nected  the  eastern  cotton  country  with  the  sea 
board.  They  ran  almost  parallel,  but  the  crops  of 
cotton  were  so  abundant  that  they  both  received 
ample  support. 

Two  great  roads  also  passed  through  Mississippi 
from  north  to  south  —  one  connecting  Mobile, 
Memphis,  and  Cairo,  Illinois,  the  other  connecting 
New  Orleans  and  Memphis.  The  cotton  belt  east 
of  the  Tombigbee  was  closely  bound  to  Charleston 
and  Savannah;  the  region  west  of  the  Tombigbee 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  37 

was  bound  by  two  systems  to  Mobile  and  New 
Orleans.  All  were  better  connected  with  the  grain 
and  stock  country  of  the  Middle  West  than  with  the 
Middle  States  and  the  East  A  map  of  these  roads 
and  communications  is  a  map  of  the  cotton  belt. 
The  railway,  that  mighty  maker  of  events,  tied 
together  the  various  planter  sections  and  supple-  > 
mented  the  river  systems  which  had  given  the 
lower  South  its  start  in  history.  Everything  thus 
tended  to  make  the  remote  mountaineers  depend 
ent  on  the  richer  counties,  and  little  was  done  to 
open  the  way  for  them  to  enter  into  the  great 
family  of  planters. 

The  same  influence  and  factors  tended  to  bind 
the  older  tobacco-growing  sections  of  the  SoutKTo 
the  masterful  cotton  communities.  The  tobacco 
counties  of  the  three  States  of  North  Carolina, 
Virginia,  and  Kentucky  contained  about  one- 
fourth  of  the  population  of  those  States,  but  their 
crops  were  worth,  in  1850,  $10,000,000,  and  in 
1860,  $20,000,000.  This  was  the  money-making 
crop  of  the  region,  and  a  very  large  portion  of  it 
was  sold  in  the  lower  South.  Both  master  and 
servant  chewed  tobacco  or  "dipped"  snuff  in  ex 
cessive  quantities.  The  tobacco  was  manufac 
tured  into  "plugs"  or  "snuff"  in  Richmond  and 


38  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Danville  and  was  shipped  south  in  long  caravans 
of  covered  wagons  much  resembling  the  Conestoga 
wagons  of  Pennsylvania  and  the  western  plains. 
But  as  the  railroads  came  into  their  own  just  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  these  overland 
trains  steadily  lost  their  trade. 

What  they  lost,  however,  in  tobacco  they  gained 
in  whisky,  which  was  distilled  in  ever-increasing 
quantities  in  the  mountains  of  Virginia  and  North 
Carolina.  Loaded  with  casks  and  crocks  filled 
with  the  corn  and  rye  whisky  or  the  peach  and 
apple  brandy  of  the  high  and  remote  mountain 
fastnesses,  these  wagons  gathered  in  trains  as  they 
approached  the  rich  cotton  belts.  It  was  an  in 
teresting  spectacle  to  see  at  eventide  the  lank  and 
wiry  forms  of  the  drivers  and  owners  of  the  so- 
called  tobacco  wagons  as  they  built  their  fires  on 
the  outskirts  of  Southern  towns  or  on  the  roadside 
to  cook  their  next  day's  rations.  Their  great  up- 
country  horses,  tethered  to  fences  or  the  limbs  of 
trees,  fed  upon  oats  while  their  masters  ate  bread 
and  bacon,  drank  deeply  from  their  jugs  of  liquor, 
and  ended  each  meal  with  liberal  quids  of  tobacco. 
These  were  the  nomads  of  the  South,  the  mediators 
between  the  tobacco-growers  and  the  corn  and  rye 
whisky  producers  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  cotton- 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  39 

growers  on  the  other.  In  return  for  the  tobacco, 
the  whisky,  and  even  the  home- woven  cloths  of  the 
back  country,  the  cotton  men  gave  raw  cotton  for 
the  Carolina  and  Virginia  mills  which  were  already 
rising  in  the  larger  towns,  as  well  as  coffee  and 
trinkets  for  the  households  of  the  remote  districts 
where  people  knew  of  the  planters  only  through 
the  tales  of  their  wagoners  and  these  welcome 
evidences  of  their  existence. 

Another  commercial  group  not  much  talked  of 
but  ever  present  at  sales,  on  railroad  trains,  and  on 
steamboats,  bound  together  even  more  closely  the 
articulate  elements  of  the  lower  South  and  the 
older  tobacco  States.  These  slave  traders  had 
either  offices  or  agents  in  every  black  district  of 
the  older  South.  When  a  planter  died,  failed  in 
business,  or  divided  his  estate,  they  plied  a  profit 
able  trade.  And  why  not?  If  it  were  a  positive 
blessing  to  own  slaves,  how  could  it  be  a  sin  to  buy 
and  sell  them?  Negroes  were  bought  and  sold  for 
the  lower  Southern  market,  driven  over  the  long 
highways  to  Alabama  or  Louisiana,  and  sold  for 
whatever  profit  there  was  in  the  business;  but  if 
droves  of  negroes  could  be  gathered  at  such  places 
as  Norfolk  or  Louisville,  they  were  stowed  safely 
in  the  holds  of  ships  and  were  finally  discharged 


40  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

at  the  great  slave  marts  of  the  cotton  country. 
Some  of  the  returns  for  cotton  which  might  have 
been  placed  on  deposit  in  the  banks  of  New  Or 
leans  or  Mobile  thus  found  their  way  to  Virginia 
or  Kentucky  and  helped  to  bind  together  the  in 
terests  of  planters  everywhere. 

From  Tennessee,  Kentucky,  and  the  Northwest, 
cattle  raisers,  pork  packers,  and  drovers  of  mules 
also  turned  south  for  their  best  markets.  Wheat, 
corn,  and  oats  accompanied  the  mules  and  steers 
upon  their  journeys,  for  the  lower  South  did  not 
then  produce  sufficient  grain  for  home  consump 
tion.  Consequently  the  great  highways,  the  rail 
roads,  and  the  steamers  all  pointed  southward, 
and  the  north-bound  traveler  met  droves  of  mules, 
hogs,  or  steers  going  to  Charleston,  Augusta,  or 
Montgomery.  Cotton  goods  or  bags  of  cotton, 
sugar,  and  coffee,  and  sometimes  cloths  from  Man 
chester  or  edged  tools  from  Sheffield,  came  back  in 
payment.  While  this  trade  did  not  bind  the  lower 
South  so  firmly  to  the  Northwest,  it  did  tend  to 
bind  the  Northwestern  farmers  and  merchants  to 
the  lower  South,  for  the  chief,  if  not  the  only, 
market  for  mules  was  in  the  South  and  it  was  the 
plantation  negroes  who  consumed  vast  quantities 
of  salt  meat. 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  41 

Even  the  merchants  in  Baltimore,  Philadelphia, 
New  York,  and  Boston  felt  in  a  somewhat  similar 
way  the  influence  of  the  cotton  region.  Their  ship 
ments  to  the  lower  South  grew  with  the  increas 
ing  crops  of  cotton,  and  Eastern  banks  carried 
for  Southern  merchants  large  deposits  with  which 
they  were  loath  to  part  when  the  time  of  reckoning 
came.  This  strong  economic  pull  was  strengthened 
by  a  greater  social  influence:  wealthy  young  men 
of  the  East  went  to  the  homes  of  the  planters  for 
their  wives,  and  ambitious  young  slaveholders  in 
the  cotton  belt  married  in  Philadelphia,  New  York, 
and  Boston.  The  best  families  of  the  older  com 
munities  of  the  North  had  much  Southern  blood 
in  their  veins,  and  the  first  families  of  the  South 
had  quite  as  much  Northern  blood  in  theirs.  Henry 
Wise,  an  ardent  pro-slavery  man,  had  married 
a  Sergeant  of  Philadelphia;  James  Chestnut  of 
South  Carolina  was  half  Pennsylvanian;  Mrs. 
Jefferson  Davis  was  the  granddaughter  of  a  Gover 
nor  of  New  Jersey;  even  the  Roosevelts  of  New 
York  named  their  children  for  their  Barnwell 
kin  of  Charleston.  Stephen  A.  Douglas  married 
a  North  Carolina  heiress  who  owned  a  plantation 
and  a  hundred  slaves  in  Mississippi.  A  powerful 
Senator  from  Indiana  was  the  owner  of  a  slave 


42  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

plantation  in  Kentucky.  Every  such  union  added 
to  the  power  and  the  sway  of  the  cotton-planters. 

So  attractive  were  the  profits  and  the  allure 
ments  of  the  wide-spreading  cotton  fields  that 
thousands  of  men  and  women  living  outside  the 
cotton  belt  invested  in  farms  or  plantations, 
according  to  their  financial  resources.1  In  North 
Carolina,  Virginia,  and  Maryland  there  were  men 
in  almost  every  county  who  owned  plantations  or 
parts  of  plantations  in  the  cotton  belt.  In  Lynch- 
burg,  Richmond,  Norfolk,  Washington,  and  Balti 
more  there  were  scores  and  even  hundreds  of  men 
who  drew  their  incomes  from  the  cotton  fields.  If 
the  present  easy  and  flexible  corporation  system 
had  been  developed  and  applied  to  cotton-growing 
before  1850,  it  is  very  probable  that  very  much 
greater  sums  of  eastern  capital  would  have  found 
investment  in  lands,  slaves,  and  cotton. 

Such  were  the  economic  forces  which  were  fo 
cused  in  the  lower  South  and  which  magnified  the 
self-importance  of  planters  when  they  appeared  at 
Newport  or  Saratoga.  Not  only  was  cotton  king 
in  the  lower  South,  but  it  was  fast  extending  its 
sway  over  old  States  like  Virginia  and  over  great 

1  This  is  a  subject  which  needs  investigation  by  some  painstaking 
student  of  American  social  and  economic  life. 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  43 

commercial  centers  like  New  York.  Why  might 
not  planters  aspire  to  rule  the  land  and  direct  the 
policy  of  nations  beyond  the  Atlantic?  And  this 
was  just  what  they  determined  to  do.  Only  they 
would  set  their  own  house  in  order  before  they 
invaded  other  lands. 

As  the  cotton  lands  showed  alarming  signs  of 
exhaustion,  the  planters  concerted  plans  for  a  more 
scientific  agriculture.  The  heavy  rainfall  of  the 
lower  South  gradually  washed  the  best  soils  of  the 
uplands  into  the  rivers,  and  the  unending  plough 
ing  and  harvesting  of  cotton  on  the  same  lands 
tended  to  destroy  the  productive  capacity  of  great 
areas.  Red  "gullies"  and  wide  "old  fields"  cov 
ered  with  broom  sedge  spoke  in  emphatic  tones 
of  the  need  of  a  better  system  of  cultivation. 

To  remedy  the  evil  of  this  condition  of  the  land, 
Edmund  Ruffin  was  employed  by  South  Carolina 
to  teach  her  planters  a  better  way.  In  other  States 
rotation  of  crops,  shading  of  the  hard  pressed  land, 
conserving  of  forests  and  unexhausted  soils  were 
the  talk  of  every  planters'  gathering.  Local,  state, 
and  sectional  societies  were  organized  to  check  the 
evil.  Men  who  had  said  that  "no  agricultural 
staple  has  ever  produced  so  great  an  effect  upon 
the  civilization  of  the  world  as  cotton, "  now  felt 


44  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

that  if  some  reform  were  not  effected  the  decline 
and  fall  of  the  cotton  kingdom  was  as  certain  as 
ever  had  been  that  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  his 
tory  of  which  they  read  with  deep  interest. 

The  remedy  which  they  proposed  was  remark 
able,  if  not  revolutionary:  the  South  should  enter 
purposely  upon  a  career  of  manufacturing. 

!****+ *•*     x>^r         Y*' 

The  planters  know  that  their  production  of  cotton  is  at 
a  sacrifice  which  looks  to  ruinous  consequences  because 
the  substance  of  their  land  is  annually  wasting  away. 
The  remedy  which  we  now  insist  upon  is  for  the  plant 
ers  to  resolve  that  the  cotton  mills  shall  be  brought  to 
the  cotton  fields;  that  they  have  been  paying  toll  to 
the  English  mill  long  enough.  The  cotton  fields  of  the 
United  States,  extending  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Rio 
Grande,  embrace  in  their  wide  extent  500,000  square 
miles.  The  interest  of  all  planters  in  this  great  field  is 
the  same.  State  lines  are  imaginary  when  the  sacrifice 
of  cotton-growing  labor  is  the  question;  old  issues  in 
politics  may  rest  in  forgetfulness;  and  the  whole  South 
may  act  as  one  state  in  giving  a  prosperous  direction 
and  division  to  the  labor  of  the  best-trained,  most 
efficient,  and  regular  force  of  workers  on  the  face  of  the 
globe.  But  a  part  of  this  force  must  be  taken  from  the 
soil  and  put  into  the  mills.  Spindles  and  looms  must 
be  brought  to  the  cotton  fields.  This  is  the  true  location 
of  this  powerful  assistant  of  the  grower. I 

1  J.  D.  B.  De  Bow:  Industrial  Resources  of  the  Southern  and  Western 
States,  vol.  i,  p.  229. 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  45 

If  this  manufacturing  were  to  be  brought  to  the 
lower  South,  negro  labor  would  be  used.  And  this 
was  tried  in  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  with  re 
sults  that  were  more  than  ordinarily  satisfactory. 
In  1852  in  the  Saluda  mills  at  Columbia,  128 
slaves  and  children  of  slaves  were  employed  to  run 
5000  spindles  and  120  looms.  The  cost  per  laborer 
per  annum  was  only  $75  as  against  $116  for  the 
white  laborer  of  the  North.  Nor  was  this  an  iso 
lated  experience.  By  1860  Southern  mills  con 
sumed  nearly  200,000  bales  of  cotton  per  year. 
Woolen  mills  were  established  in  Virginia  and 
North  Carolina.  Eastern  capital  was  already 
seeking  investment  in  such  establishments,  and 
skilled  laborers  and  managers  from  New  England 
and  Europe  were  waiting  to  put  up  machinery. 
The  up-country  and  piney-woods  whites  were  seen 
to  be  valuable  as  future  labor  reserves. 

Thus  the  needs  of  the  South,  the  warning  of 
failing  lands,  the  plentiful  supply  of  cheap  labor, 
and  the  abounding  water-power  were  about  to 
start  the  cotton-planters  upon  a  course  of  conserv 
ing  their  lands,  manufacturing  their  own  cotton, 
and  employing  profitably  thousands  of  poor  whites 
who  had  not  been  accustomed  to  work  more  than 
a  few  months  in  the  year.  If  the  new  movement 


46  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

should  prove  successful,  it  was  thought  that  cities 
would  grow  up,  that  greater  markets  for  live  stock 
would  be  created,  that  rotation  of  crops  would 
become  the  rule,  that  soils  would  be  fertilized  and 
preserved,  and,  what  was  more  important,  that 
the  lower  South  would  complete  her  monopoly  — 
for  the  planters  would  have  no  competition  from 
the  cotton  of  Egypt  or  India,  and  they  would  at 
the  same  time  keep  the  manufacturer's  profits  and 
all  the  freight  charges  for  themselves. l 

With  things  taking  this  turn,  Southern  leaders 
saw,  or  thought  they  saw,  manifest  destiny  beckon 
ing  to  them  in  Mexico  and  Central  America.  Their 
institutions  were  apparently  the  best  in  the  world, 
their  economic  position  incomparably  the  best, 
and  their  future  beyond  the  power  of  man  to 
imagine.  Cuba  and  Mexico  were  in  the  hands  of 
weak  and  backward  peoples,  and  the  poor  Central 
American  States  were  in  still  worse  plight.  None 
but  selfish  Englishmen  could  wish  to  stay  the  hand 
of  conquest  in  those  regions,  and  all  true  friends 
of  mankind  must  wish  the  guiding  hand  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  slaveholders  to  be  applied  to  Indian  and 

1  It  was  not  so  clearly  perceived  that  these  Southern  interests  would 
become  similar  to  those  of  the  North  and  that  Southern  politicians 
would  cease  their  war  upon  the  protective  policy  of  the  industrial 
States. 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  COTTON  MAGNATES  47 

half-breed  owners  of  those  rich  and  inviting  com 
munities.  After  the  Mexican  War  and  its  easy 
successes,  this  imperialist  ideal  captured  the  im 
aginations  of  most  of  the  leaders  of  the  lower 
South.  The  more  the  world  demanded  cotton,  the 
more  the  natural  increase  of  the  slaves  enriched  the 
planters,  the  more  glowing  the  picture  of  a  future 
cotton  empire  appeared. 

Thus  the  trend  of  events  in  that  great  region 
which  extended  from  Texas  to  Baltimore  and  from 
the  Gulf  and  Atlantic  coasts  to  the  Alleghany 
Mountains,  even  to  St.  Louis  and  Kansas  City, 
seemed  to  confirm  the  planter  in  his  industrial 
monopoly  and  to  strengthen  his  hold  upon  his 
slaves,  upon  his  lands,  and  even  upon  the  poorer 
whites.  The  master  of  a  mansion,  a  cotton  plan 
tation,  and  a  hundred  slaves  was  undoubtedly  the 
social  model  of  the  lower  South,  and  he  was  fast 
becoming  the  arbiter  of  the  fortunes  of  his  section, 
if  not  of  the  United  States  as  a  whole.  Such  men 
and  such  groups  seldom  live  long  without  develop 
ing  a  philosophy  which  is  at  once  their  apology  and 
their  guide  to  life. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER 

THE  impassable  barrier  between  master  and  slave 
and  the  growing  distance  between  the  gentleman  of 
family  and  the  poor  white  inevitably  brought  men 
to  the  formulation  of  a  doctrine  of  life  peculiar  to 
these  conditions.  But  never  in  any  country  was  it 
more  difficult  than  it  was  in  the  ante-bellum  South 
for  writers  to  publish  or  believers  to  avow  a  social 
faith  which  contradicted  the  Declaration  of  In 
dependence;  and  the  farther  southwest  one  went 
the  more  difficult,  for  democracy  was  too  recent 
a  fact  and  the  open  profession  of  personal  superi 
ority  too  offensive. 

The  discrediting  of  Jefferson  did  not  begin 
to  take  effect  in  the  lower  South  till  such  great 
Virginians  as  John  Randolph  and  Chief  Justice 
Marshall  had  successfully  ridiculed  his  teachings 
as  glittering  fallacies.  Four  years  after  Jeffer 
son's  death,  the  Virginia  constitutional  convention 

48 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  49 

openly  disavowed  the  equalitarian  teachings  which 
had  underlain  the  politics  of  the  South  since  1800; 
and  two  years  later,  when  the  Nat  Turner  Insur 
rection  was  under  discussion  in  the  Virginia  Legis 
lature,  a  young  teacher  at  William  and  Mary  Col 
lege  appeared  before  the  committee  on  abolition 
and  presented  a  new  system  of  social  science. 
This  man  was  Thomas  R.  Dew,  a  trained  political 
scientist,  recently  returned  from  the  German  uni 
versities  where  he  had  been  taught  that  the  in 
equality  of  men  was  fundamental  to  all  social 
organization.  He  argued  so  forcibly  against 
emancipation  of  the  slaves  that  men  began  to  say 
aloud  what  they  had  long  believed  —  that  South 
ern  society  was  already  sharply  stratified  and  that 
men  might  as  well  avow  it. 

Dew  did  not  at  the  beginning  attack  the  older 
ideals  of  America.  To  have  done  so  would  have 
been  to  alienate  men  whom  he  must  win.  The 
Jefferson  myth  was  too  strong,  even  in  aristocratic 
Virginia,  for  men  to  proclaim  their  own  superi 
ority  and  keep  straight  faces.  Consequently  Dew 
treated  historically  the  mooted  subject  of  negro 
slavery.  He  showed  that  slavery  had  been  the 
condition  of  all  ancient  culture,  that  Christianity 
approved  servitude,  and  that  the  law  of  Moses 


50  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

had  both  assumed  and  positively  established  slav 
ery.  If  Moses  and  Paul  justified  and  preached 
slavery  among  people  of  the  same  race,  it  was 
incomparably  easier  to  convince  an  increasingly 
orthodox  society  like  that  of  the  South  that  it 
could  be  no  sin  in  white  men  to  hold  black  men 
in  bondage.  How  much  easier  to  justify  the  idea 
of  negro  servitude  to  men  who  had  inherited 
their  slaves  from  honored  ancestors,  when  it  was 
made  plain  that  the  Bible  taught  that  even  white 
servitude  was  right  and  proper!  It  was  a  time 
when  men,  especially  Southern  men,  were  studying 
their  classics  afresh.  The  ancient  world  became  a 
real  world  to  the  South  in  the  period  of  1850  to 
1860.  The  new  philosophy  not  only  found  its 
justification  in  the  writings  of  the  greatest  men 
of  antiquity;  it  fitted  the  facts  of  Southern  life. 

Dew' made  it  perfectly  clear  that  slavery  was  as 
profitable  to  Virginians  as  all  knew  it  to  be  to 
cotton-planters  farther  south.  He  insisted  that 
the  sale  of  the  surplus  supply  of  slaves  brought 
almost  as  great  a  return  each  year  as  their  greatest 
crop,  tobacco.  Thus  to  the  argument  of  history 
was  added  that  of  economic  profit.  And  here  no 
less  a  person  than  the  late  Governor  of  Virginia, 
William  B.  Giles,  came  to  the  aid  of  philosophy. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  51 

Giles  had  proved  from  the  figures  of  the  custom 
houses  of  Virginia  that  the  returns  from  negroes 
shipped  South  every  year  were  very  large. 

With  the  facts  of  history,  the  support  of  Christi 
anity,  and  the  teaching  of  economics  in  his  favor, 
it  was  less  difficult  for  Dew  to  attack  the  "fallacies  " 
of  Jefferson  and  the  great  Declaration.  Besides, 
had  not  all  the  greater  sons  of  the  Old  Dominion 
recently  declared  that  manhood  suffrage,  equal 
representation,  and  equal  rights  were  inadmissible 
doctrines?  Certainly  Marshall,  Madison,  Ran 
dolph,  Tazewell,  and  the  rest  had  both  argued  and 
voted  against  all  these  things.  The  public  mood 
was  therefore  favorable,  and  the  new  faith  gained 
a  quick  and  ready  hearing. 

The  new  philosophy  asserted  that  men  were  not 
equal,  but  that  some  men  were  fit  only  for  the 
hard  toil  of  the  field  while  others  were  plainly  de 
signed  for  the  easier  task  of  managing  and  direct 
ing  the  labor  of  others.  There  were  no  natural 
rights;  rights  were  prescriptive  and  they  implied  an 
equivalent,  a  service  rendered  to  society.  A  land 
owner  might  vote;  he  had  a  stake  in  society,  and 
he  aided  men  by  adding  to  the  goods  that  men 
must  have.  One  who  did  not  own  land  might  or 
might  not  vote,  according  as  society  directed.  A 


52  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

slave  enjoyed  the  right  of  protection  against  vio 
lence,  hunger,  and  extreme  cold,  and  in  exchange 
for  this  protection  he  gave  himself,  his  work,  and 
his1  children. 

If  society  were  organized  on  this  basis,  there 
would  be  three  classes,  with  well-defined  rank  and 
standing:  the  highest  or  the  guiding  and  teaching 
group;  the  traders  and  free  laborers  and  perhaps 
small  land-owners  from  whom  the  skilled  labor 
necessary  to  all  groups  was  to  be  derived;  and  the 
slaves  or  "mudsills,"  as  they  soon  came  to  be  called. 
Professional  men  —  lawyers,  physicians,  preachers, 
and  teachers  —  were  expected  to  be  recruited  from 
the  small  farmers  and  even  from  the  wealthier  class. 
If  every  man  remained  in  his  place  and  performed 
the  task  expected  of  him,  there  would  be  the  great 
est  economy  of  effort  and  the  highest  civilization 
possible  to  man.  Woman  would  be  the  noblest  fig 
ure  of  all  and  she  would  cast  over  men  the  spell  of 
her  influence;  gentlemen  would  be  chivalrous  and 
knightly,  devoting  their  best  thought  to  the  State 
but  always  lending  a  hand  to  the  weak  and  the 
humble  as  the  first  duty  of  the  strong. 

This  new  teaching  might  not  have  succeeded 
so  promptly  if  men  had  not  already  been  living 
for  years  upon  such  an  understanding  of  things 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  53 

without  being  bold  enough  to  formulate  a  theory. 
Because  Dew  went  one  step  farther  and  put  into 
writing  the  facts  upon  which  men  had  acted,  he 
was  hailed  as  a  master.  William  and  Mary  Col 
lege  made  him  its  head,  and  students  from  the 
lower  South  hastened  to  the  old  institution  to  sit 
at  the  feet  of  the  new  Gamaliel.1 

The  principle  of  all  this  teaching  was  stated  thus 
by  President  Dew:  "The  exclusive  owners  of 
property  ever  have  been,  ever  will  and  perhaps 
ever  ought  to  be  the  virtual  rulers  of  mankind.  .  .  . 
It  is  the  order  of  nature  and  of  God  that  the  being 
of  superior  faculties  and  knowledge,  and  therefore 
of  superior  power,  should  control  and  dispose  of 
those  who  are  inferior.  It  is  as  much  in  the  order 
of  nature  that  men  should  enslave  each  other  as 
that  other  animals  should  prey  upon  each  other." 
But  Dew  probably  did  not  intend  to  put  the  case 
so  harshly  as  it  appears  in  the  last  sentence. 

It  remained  for  Chancellor  William  Harper  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  South  Carolina  to  advance  the 
doctrine  to  its  extreme  form.  The  South  Carolinian 

1  Dew's  philosophy  first  appeared  in  Richmond  in  May,  1832,  in 
pamphlet  form.  But  his  ideas  were  reprinted  in  the  newspapers  in  all 
parts  of  the  South  and  his  pamphlet  was  reprinted  many  times  before 
1860.  It  is  most  available  now  in  The  Pro-Slavery  Argument,  Charles 
ton,  1852. 


54  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

rejoiced  in  the  "able  statement"  of  the  case 
by  the  Virginian  and  he  endeavored  to  elaborate 
the  new  philosophy  where  it  seemed  necessary  to 
the  upbuilding  of  a  perfect  state.  Harper's  work, 
which  first  appeared  in  1838  under  the  title  of 
A  Memoir  on  Slavery,  was  less  historical  but  more 
to  the  point  than  that  of  Dew.  The  Bible  and  the 
ancient  philosophers  were  of  course  the  great 
witnesses. 

Harper  conceived  of  slavery  as  the  natural  order: 
"To  constitute  a  society  a  variety  of  offices  must 
be  discharged,  from  those  requiring  the  very 
lowest  degree  of  intellectual  power  to  those  re 
quiring  the  very  highest.  It  should  seem  that  the 
endowments  ought  to  be  apportioned  according  to 
the  exigencies  of  the  situation.  And  the  first  want 
of  society  is  leaders.  The  first  care  of  a  state  which 
regards  its  own  safety,  prosperity,  and  honor 
should  be  that  when  minds  of  extraordinary  power 
appear,  to  whatever  department  of  knowledge,  art, 
or  science  their  exertions  may  be  directed,  the 
means  should  be  provided  of  their  most  consum 
mate  cultivation."  But  to  others  such  careful 
training  could  have  no  significance.  "Odium  has 
been  cast  upon  our  legislation  on  account  of 
its  forbidding  the  elements  of  education  to  be 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  55 

communicated  to  slaves.  But,  in  truth,  what  in 
jury  is  done  to  them  by  this?  He  who  works 
during  the  day  with  his  hands  does  not  read  in 
the  intervals  of  leisure  for  his  amusement  or  the 
improvement  of  his  mind.  If  there  were  any 
chance  of  their  elevating  their  rank  and  condition 
in  society,  it  might  be  a  matter  of  hardship  that 
they  should  be  denied  those  rudiments  of  knowl 
edge  which  open  the  way  to  further  attainments." 
Not  only  does  Harper  hold  that  the  lowest  class 
in  society  is  to  be  trained  to  only  the  hardest  toil, 
but  he  also  believes  that  its  members  are  necessarily 
on  a  low  moral  plane:  "A  slave  has  no  hope  that 
by  a  course  of  integrity,  he  can  materially  elevate 
his  condition  in  society,  nor  can  his  offense  against 
honesty  materially  depress  it,  or  affect  his  means  of 
support  or  that  of  his  family.  Compared  to  the 
freemen  he  has  no  character  to  establish  or  lose." 
It  is  not  different  in  the  relations  of  the  sexes  and 
for  the  same  reason:  "In  northern  communities 
the  unmarried  woman  who  becomes  a  mother  is  an 
outcast  from  society.  She  has  given  birth  to  a 
human  being  who  is  commonly  educated  to  a 
course  of  vice,  depravity,  and  crime.  It  is  not 
so  with  the  female  slave.  She  is  not  a  less  use 
ful  member  of  society  than  before.  She  has  not 


56  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

impaired  her  means  of  support  nor  materially  im 
paired  her  character  or  lowered  her  station;  she 
has  done  no  great  injury  to  herself  or  any  other 
human  being.  Her  offspring  is  not  a  burden  but 
an  acquisition  to  her  owner.  The  want  of  chastity 
among  slaves  hardly  deserves  a  harsher  name  than 
weakness." 

The  chasm  between  this  lowest  class  of  society 
and  the  masters  and  leaders  who  are  at  the  top  is 
so  great  that  none  can  bridge  it.  There  is,  to  be 
sure,  a  free  or  intermediate  class  from  which  the 
truly  noble  are  recruited  and  from  which  is  derived 
the  connecting  link  between  the  field  hand  and 
the  gentleman.  Men  of  this  group  are  to  fill  the 
places  of  mechanics,  merchants,  engineers,  physi 
cians,  teachers,  lawyers,  preachers,  and  overseers. 
They  should  be  educated  at  the  expense  of  society, 
should  have  the  right  to  vote  and  to  bear  arms, 
and  should  be  made  to  feel  the  pride  of  race  and 
color  and  to  appreciate  the  benefits  of  a  caste  sys 
tem.  And  thus  Chancellor  Harper  comes,  like  Presi 
dent  Dew,  to  repudiate  the  doctrine  of  the  great 
Virginia  statesman  and  philosopher:  "Is  it  not 
palpably  nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  no  man  was 
ever  born  free  and  that  no  two  men  were  ever  born 
equal,  than  to  say  that  all  men  are  born  free  and 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  57 

equal?  .  .  .  Man  is  born  to  subjection.  .  .  . 
The  proclivity  of  the  natural  man  is  to  domineer 
or  to  be  subservient."  It  is  through  the  evolution 
of  men  in  society  that  each  man  or  class  of  men 
comes  to  find  the  proper  place  and  level,  and 
society  then  crystallizes  and  legalizes  the  resulting 
differences.  This  is  the  very  condition  of  the  de 
velopment  of  civilization.  Laws  are  made  to  pre 
vent  outbreaks  against  this  established  order  as 
well  as  to  render  the  different  classes  contented 
and  even  ignorant  —  for  "if  there  are  sordid, 
servile,  and  laborious  offices  to  be  performed,  is  it 
not  better  that  there  should  be  sordid,  servile,  and 
laborious  beings  to  perform  them?" 

But  there  will  inevitably  be  resentment  and  in 
surrection  :  foreigners  will  foment  troubles,  natives 
will  be  restless,  and  slaves  may  rise,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  slavery  tends  to  decrease  friction  more 
and  more  as  population  becomes  denser  and  the 
hope  of  liberation  from  a  given  state  of  society  is 
definitely  abandoned.  To  meet  all  contingencies, 
standing  armies  must  be  created  and  maintained. 
In  the  South  such  a  course  would  be  easy  because 
the  honor  of  defending  one's  country  would  be 
allowed  only  to  white  men,  slaves  being  possible 
material  only  in  dire  necessity.  In  the  South > 


58  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

"like  ancient  Athens,  it  will  be  necessary  that 
every  citizen  should  be  a  soldier.  .  .  .  And  per 
haps  a  wise  foresight  should  induce  our  state  to 
provide  that  it  should  have  within  itself  such 
military  knowledge  and  skill  as  may  be  sufficient 
to  organize,  discipline,  and  command  armies,  by 
establishing  a  military  academy  or  school  of  dis 
cipline."1 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  develop  farther  the 
ideas  of  Dew  and  Harper.  They  prepared  their 
premises  carefully  and  boldly.  They  did  not  speak 
the  language  of  the  politician,  but  they  spoke 
rather  as  wise  men  giving  their  fellows  those  fun 
damental  propositions  from  which  practical  leaders 
might  make  what  deductions  exigencies  required. 
Certainly  the  South  would  no  longer  profess  de 
votion  to  the  notions  of  freedom  and  equality  if 
these  teachings  should  find  acceptance. 

Acceptance,  indeed,  these  teachings  readily 
found.  In  1837  Calhoun,  the  greatest  and  sincer- 
est  of  all  Southern  leaders,  openly  announced  that 
he  held  slavery  to  be  a  positive  good  and  that 

1  Harper's  philosophy  may  be  found  in  The  Pro-Slavery  Argument 
already  cited.  I  have  not  given  page  and  line,  because  I  have  had  to 
make  many  extracts  and  condense  them.  The  reader  who  would 
understand  this  philosophy  in  its  minor  details  as  well  as  in  outline 
would  do  well  to  read  the  works  of  Dew  and  Harper. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  59 

Southerners  should  no  longer  apologize  for  it:  "I 
hold  slavery  to  be  a  good;  .  .  .  moreover,  there 
never  has  yet  existed  a  wealthy  and  civilized  society 
in  which  one  portion  of  the  community  did  not  in 
point  of  fact  live  on  the  labor  of  the  other." x  This 
statement  might  have  been  taken  at  one  time  as  a 
peevish  thrust  on  the  part  of  Calhoun  at  the  cap 
tains  of  industry  who  were  getting  the  better  of 
him  in  national  legislation.  But  in  1837  Calhoun, 
like  so  many  other  Southerners  of  the  old  Jeffer- 
sonian  democracy,  had  changed  his  mind;  he 
meant  what  he  said;  he  believed  in  the  caste  system 
of  which  in  the  South  slavery  was  the  mainstay. 
In  his  view  nothing  could  be  more  unfounded  and 
false  than  the  opinion  that  all  men  are  born  free 
and  equal ;  inequality  was  indispensable  to  progress ; 
government  was  not  the  result  of  compact,  nor 
was  it  safe  to  entrust  the  suffrage  to  all. 2 

These  are  the  views  to  which  the  people  of  the 
lower  South  were  being  converted.  The  adoption 
of  this  point  of  view  marks  a  revolution  in  South 
ern  thought  quite  as  remarkable  as  the  revolution 
which  took  place  in  German  thought  under  the 

'Richard  K.  CrallS:  The  Work*  of  John  C.  Calhoun,  1863-1866, 
vol.  n,  p.  630. 

'Ibid.,  vol.  i,  pp.  8,  12,  46-58. 


60  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

leadership  of  Bismarck  during  the  second  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  In  the  lower  South  the 
influence  of  Calhoun  was  very  great;  but  even  that 
influence  could  not  have  availed  had  it  not  been 
for  the  difficult  and  apparently  insoluble  problem 
of  negro  slavery.  After  Calhoun  became  the  advo 
cate  of  caste  and  inequality,  it  was  not  difficult  for 
others  of  lesser  note  to  follow  his  lead  or  for  the 
great  majority  of  the  planters  to  accept  the  new 
faith.  Still,  if  the  lower  South  were  to  present  a 
solid  front,  all  the  professional  men  and  the  upper 
middle  class  must  also  yield  their  belief  and  accept 
as  final  the  idea  that  society  must  be  divided  into 
sharply  defined  ranks,  and  that  some  men  must  be 
the  burden  bearers  for  the  rest  and  labor  all  their 
lives  without  the  hope  of  improvement  or  more 
compensation  than  their  food  and  shelter.  If  we 
examine  the  writings  of  some  of  the  other  spokes 
men  of  the  South,  both  lower  and  upper,  we  shall 
see  how  far  this  revolution  of  thought  went. 

In  South  Carolina  nearly  every  leader,  whether 
in  politics,  religion,  or  education,  upheld  slav 
ery  and  endeavored  to  reply  in  positive  terms 
to  all  who  condemned  the  system.  Macaulay, 
Dickens,  Mrs.  Trollope,  and  Harriet  Martineau 
were  answered  with  the  statement  that  modern 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  61 

industrialism  was  worse  than  slavery.  James  H. 
Hammond,  one  of  the  moderate  and  very  popular 
followers  of  Calhoun,  published  a  series  of  letters 
in  1845  in  which  he  attacked  England  and  New 
England  for  the  cruelties  of  their  industrial  system. 
As  no  reply  was  made  to  the  heart-rending  picture 
which  he  drew,  the  lower  South  took  great  consola 
tion  in  the  belief  that  their  caste  system  was  not  as 
heartless  as  that  of  their  opponents.  Southerners, 
they  said,  did  take  care  of  the  children  of  slaves; 
they  did  employ  physicians  for  their  sick  or  aged 
dependents;  and  they  did  maintain  a  sort  of  com 
radeship  with  their  slaves  which  blunted  the  keen 
edge  of  servitude. 

From  this  point  the  advance  was  easy  to  the 
position  already  taken  by  Dew  that  the  negroes 
were  the  happiest  of  mankind,  because  relieved  of 
all  care  for  themselves  and  their  offspring.  Ham 
mond  urged  that  "our  patriarchal  scheme  awakens 
the  higher  and  finer  feelings  of  our  nature.  It  is 
not  wanting  in  its  enthusiasm  and  its  poetry." 
William  Gilmore  Simms  of  South  Carolina,  author 
of  as  many  books  as  Scott  himself,  lent  all  the 
weight  of  his  name  to  the  thesis  that  slaves  were 
the  happiest  of  laborers.  William  L.  Yancey  of 
Alabama  made  the  Southern  social  system  the 


62  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

theme  of  his  marvelous  oratory.  Henry  S.  Foote, 
Jefferson  Davis,  John  Slidell,  and  every  other  pub 
lic  man  of  the  lower  South  became  ardent  advo 
cates  of  the  newer  faith.  Before  1850  the  older 
Jeffersonian  ideal  was  totally  abandoned,  and  the 
contrary  ideal  of  the  inequality  of  men  had  been 
adopted. 

To  men  whose  interests  were  those  of  masters  of 
slaves  and  whose  philosophy  was  the  doctrine  of 
social  caste  and  prescriptive  rights,  it  was  but 
natural  that  Walter  Scott's  famous  novels  should 
make  appeal.  One  New  York  publisher  said  he 
sent  Scott's  works  South  in  carload  lots.  The  Lay 
of  the  Last  Minstrel  and  the  Lady  of  the  Lake  stirred 
Southern  men  to  think  of  themselves  as  proud 
knights  ready  to  do  or  die  for  some  romantic  ideal ; 
and  the  long  list  of  novels  from  Waverley  to  The 
Fair  Maid  of  Perth  seemed  to  reflect  anew  the  old 
ideals  of  fine  lords  and  fair  ladies  whom  Southern 
ers  now  set  themselves  to  imitate.  Scott's  gentle 
folk  always  talked  and  acted  in  lofty  fashion;  the 
poor  and  the  ill-placed  were  rough  and  brutal, 
without  finer  feeling,  and  ready  to  accept  the  kicks 
and  cuffs  of  their  betters;  and  the  money-getter 
was  always  the  sharp  and  unlovely  creature  who 
suggested  the  Yankee  pedler  or  crafty  financier. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  63 

Before  1850  it  was  good  form  for  Southern  gentle 
men  to  place  Sir  Walter  Scott's  novels  on  their 
library  shelves  and  for  all  Southern  boys  and  girls 
to  read  these  books  as  the  great  models  of  life  and 
good  breeding.  Few  men  ever  had  a  greater  in 
fluence  over  the  cotton-planters  than  the  beloved 
Scottish  bard  and  novelist. 

But  while  Scott  was  enthroned  in  every  library,  the 
sturdier  Scotsman,  Thomas  Carlyle,  also  knocked 
at  the  door  of  Southern  intellect.  Carlyle  went 
roughly  to  his  point.  "Would  you  turn  out  slaves, 
like  horses,  to  graze?"  Then  why  talk  of  abolition? 
"Every  man  is  created  to  work,  some  at  menial 
tasks,  some  at  higher  callings  and  others,  as  God- 
given  heroes,  to  lead  mankind."  In  scores  of  books 
and  essays  the  grim  old  teacher  laid  out  his  doc 
trine  of  social  subordination  and  class  distinction. 
That  was  all  that  Dew  and  Harper  and  Calhoun 
and  Hammond  desired.  The  greatest  realist  in 
England  had  weighed  their  system  and  found  it 
just  and  humane.  It  is  astonishing  how  greatly 
Carlyle  influenced  the  world.  A  few  years  later  he 
was  one  of  the  prophets  in  Prussia,  and  his  Frederick 
the  Great,  the  first  volumes  of  which  appeared  in 
1858,  made  capital  for  the  Hohenzollern  as  well 
as  for  every  other  imperialist  the  world  over. 


64  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

In  the  South  George  Fitzhugh  took  up  the  idea 
of  strong-arm  government,  definitely  acknowl 
edging  his  indebtedness  to  Carlyle,  and  presented 
to  the  country  a  book  which  was  designed  to  round 
out  all  that  had  gone  before.  In  Sociology  for  the 
South1  he  laid  down  a  plan  for  his  section  of  the 
country  which  he  expected  to  see  adopted  else 
where  if  it  proved  successful.  After  restating  the 
caste  system  of  Dew  and  his  successors,  he  attacked 
Adam  Smith  with  ridicule  and  relentless  logic. 
Society,  he  maintained,  must  be  organized  for 
positive,  not  negative,  purposes.  Men  must  be 
restrained,  governed,  subjected  to  discipline;  and 
states  must  take  care  that  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  shall  have  a  vocation  and  useful  employment 
with  due  support.  The  idle  must  be  compelled  to 
work  —  only  people  must  not  confuse  with  idleness 
that  leisurely  thinking  which  is  the  work  of  phi 
losophers.  In  such  a  state,  freedom  of  movement, 
of  trade,  or  of  industry  is  not  possible;  social  effi 
ciency  and  economic  success  in  a  world  of  reality 
demand  organization. 

But  organization  connotes  slavery  for  the  igno 
rant  and  the  poor.  In  England,  the  duty  of  the 
state  is  to  subordinate  the  owners  of  the  mills  to 

1  Published  in  Richmond,  1854. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  65 

the  Government,  and  the  Government  should  find 
them  employees.  The  workers  should  be  made 
slaves  of  the  industrial  lords  and  compelled  to 
labor.  They  should  be  forbidden  freedom  of 
movement  and  should  be  attached  to  their  masters, 
who  in  turn  must  be  compelled  to  give  them  sup 
port  and  kindly  treatment.  Children  should  be 
reared  at  the  expense  of  the  industry.  Strife  and 
poverty  must  disappear.  The  same  program 
should  be  adopted  in  New  England  and  in  the  West. 
Instead  of  the  Federal  Government  giving  away 
lands  or  selling  them  in  small  tracts,  great  tracts 
should  be  granted  to  responsible  men,  who  should 
be  allowed  to  entail  these  at  death  upon  their 
oldest  sons.  The  landless  and  the  idle  of  the 
Eastern  States  should  be  attached  to  these  plan 
tations  and  become  the  tenants  of  their  masters 
for  life. 

"  Slavery  will  everywhere  be  abolished  or  every 
where  be  reinstated"  was  the  alternative  presented 
by  Fitzhugh.  He  expected  that  slavery  would  be 
everywhere  reinstated  and  that  all  the  world  would 
become  like  the  South,  except  that  the  South  would 
have  the  happy  advantage  of  making  all  white  men 
free  and  of  leaving  the  drudgery  to  negro  slaves 
who  were  especially  created  for  the  purpose.  With 


66  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

such  a  system,  Southerners  would  be  the  happiest 
as  well  as  the  most  favored  people  under  Heaven. 
In  the  South  all  white  men  would  be  educated  at 
public  expense  and  the  best  of  them  would  become 
philosophers  and  litterateurs,  like  their  prototypes 
in  ancient  Athens.  Women  would  become,  where 
they  were  not  already  so,  the  queens  of  earth. 
There  would  be  no  Miss  Martineaus,  no  Madame 
de  Staels,  but  womanly  women  whom  men  would 
adore,  and  knightly  men  to  whom  women  would 
cling  like  vines  to  sturdy  oaks.  To  be  a  Southerner 
would  be  a  distinction. 

With  this  ideal  state  duly  propped  and  bolstered 
with  laws  of  primogeniture  and  entail,  and  pro 
tected  against  free  trade  and  foolish  ideas  from 
without,  it  would  be  impossible  for  other  nations 
to  compete.  White  men  v/ould  run  away  from 
the  North  just  as  negroes  ran  away  from  the 
South,  in  order  to  join  the  new  regime  and  to 
enjoy  the  freedom  and  blessings  of  the  most  in 
telligent  and  beneficent  social  order  that  the 
world  had  ever  known. 

In  this  new  civilization  Christianity  should  be 
come  the  one  and  only  religion.  Slavery  and  Chris 
tianity  were  mutual  supports  and  mutual  guaran 
tees.  Under  their  influence  property  would  bear 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  67 

all  the  burdens  of  society  and  its  owners  would 
receive  all  the  honors.  There  would  thus  be  no 
poverty  and  little  crime  because  the  chief  motive 
to  crime  is  poverty.  Few  men  would  ever  become 
insane  because  every  man's  task  would  be  con 
genial  and  the  free  open-air  life  would  be  health 
ful.  If  this  system  were  left  alone,  there  would 
be  no  commotions  and  no  wars;  and  over  and 
above  all  God  would  preside,  and  order  would  rule 
without  a  flaw  or  a  slip. 

While  this  book  did  not  command  the  immediate 
attention  that  similar  books  in  modern  Germany 
have  received,  it  was  accepted  by  the  newspapers 
as  pointing  the  way  to  the  future.  In  the  most 
serious  reviews  it  was  treated  as  a  great  and  pro 
found  work.  If  criticism  was  offered,  it  was  always 
in  the  way  of  improvement  and  elaboration.  An 
enlarged  if  not  improved  edition  was  brought  out 
two  years  later  under  the  title  of  Cannibals  All; 
or,  Slaves  without  Masters.  Fitzhugh  became  an 
influential  publicist,  corresponded  with  Carlyle, 
gave  lectures  in  the  East,  and  set  forth  his  doc 
trines  till  the  thunder  of  the  guns  at  Fort  Sumter 
announced  that  the  argument  was  closed. 

This  social  philosophy,  elaborated  and  con 
stantly  reprinted  in  newspapers  or  pamphlets, 


68  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

represented  fairly  what  the  articulate  South  was 
ready  to  go  to  war  for.  There  was,  however,  some 
protest.  The  editor  of  the  Southern  Literary  Mes 
senger  insisted  in  the  beginning  that  Dew's  ideal 
society  was  by  no  means  ideal  to  him;  it  was  not 
until  1843  that  he  became  a  convert  to  the  new 
faith.  In  North  Carolina  slavery  had  never  won 
such  complete  ascendancy  as  it  had  in  the  lower 
South;  and  there  opposition  to  the  accepted  dogma 
was  strenuously  voiced  till  hushed  by  law  or  by  a 
too  powerful  public  opinion.  In  1846  Daniel  R. 
Goodlow,  in  a  pamphlet  of  real  acumen,  urged  that 
slavery  was  not  a  perfect  institution.  He  insisted 
that  the  investment  of  some  billions  of  capital  in 
the  ownership  of  labor  was  a  doubtful  speculation. 
The  land  would  be  worth  as  much  if  the  negroes 
were  free,  and  the  capital  invested  in  slaves  might 
better  be  put  into  improvements. 

A  less  effective  protest  was  voiced  by  Hinton  R. 
Helper,  in  1857,  in  the  Impending  Crisis  of  the 
South,  a  book  which  became  a  campaign  document 
in  the  North  three  years  later.  Helper  endeavored 
to  show  that  the  planters  composed  a  far-reaching 
oligarchy,  if  not  conspiracy,  against  the  poorer 
farmers  and  the  landless  classes.  His  statistics 
were  well  calculated  to  prove  further  that  this 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  COTTON-PLANTER  69 

conspiracy  had  been  the  sole  cause  of  the  economic 
backwardness  of  the  South.  But  Southerners  did 
not  suffer  his  book  to  be  read.  A  hapless  agent 
who  endeavored  to  circulate  it  was  quickly  haled 
to  court.  Neither  Goodlow's  argument  nor  Hel 
per's  outcry  had  any  appreciable  effect  in  stemming 
the  tide  of  pro-slavery  teaching.  Not  one  man  in  a 
hundred  even  heard  of  them.  Nor  was  the  moder 
ate  reasoning  of  George  M.  Weston's  The  Progress 
of  Slavery  in  the  United  States  (1857)  effective. 
Even  if  men  in  their  reflective  moments'  were  in 
clined  to  agree  with  him,  the  aristocratic  and  feudal 
evolution  had  gone  too  far. 

During  the  twenty-five  years  which  had  elapsed 
since  Virginia  had  declined  definitely  the  task  of 
abolishing  slavery  and  since  Dew  had  offered  his 
convincing  argument,  the  cotton-planters  as  well 
as  the  sugar  and  tobacco  growers  had  definitely  and 
finally  broken  with  the  Jeffersonian  ideal.  Their 
growing  economic  power  and  the  attractiveness  of 
their  labor  system  had  confirmed  them  in  their 
view  that  government  must  needs  represent  prop 
erty  and  privilege  and  that  democracy  was  a 
failure.  Since  the  planters  were  the  articulate 
element  in  society  and  the  small  farmers  and  land 
less  groups  were  hardly  in  a  position  to  assert  any 


70  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

contrary  views,  it  was  not  difficult  to  make  the 
lower  South  socially  solid.  No  newspaper  of  any 
importance,  no  college  or  university  professor,  no 
prominent  preacher,  and  no  politician  of  any  party 
offered  effective  resistance.  In  two  or  three  in 
stances  professors  did  go  so  far  as  to  support  mildly 
anti-slavery  views,  but  they  were  removed  from 
their  positions.  One  eminent  man  in  Charleston 
stood  alone  and  was  left  free,  apparently  because 
any  attempt  to  curb  him  might  advertise  his 
moderate  ideas.  The  mails  were  closed  against 
abolition  books  and  newspapers  as  a  matter  of 
course;  and  boycotts  were  urged  against  North 
ern  periodicals  if  they  printed  articles  that  dis 
pleased  the  South.  There  was  the  most  perfect 
agreement  ever  known  in  Anglo-Saxon  history. 
Men  thought  the  ideal  social  organization  had 
been  found.  Were  not  the  planters  prosperous,  the 
middle-class  and  landless  groups  contented,  and 
the  slaves  the  happiest  of  living  men? 


CHAPTER  IV 

LIFE   AND    LITERATURE   IN   THE   LOWER   SOUTH 

THE  home  of  the  cotton-planter  was  a  modest 
country  house  of  ten  or  twelve  rooms.  It  stood 
upon  an  elevation  along  the  roadside  or  upon  a 
river  bluff,  surrounded  by  half  a  dozen  or  more 
negro  cabins  known  as  the  "  quarters."  There  were 
tall,  spreading  trees,  graveled  walks,  shrubs,  and, 
in  the  grounds  of  the  greater  places,  marble  figures 
of  wild  animals  or  replicas  of  antique  statues.  The 
house  itself  was  likely  to  be  surrounded  by  long 
porches  which  gave  protection  against  the  intense 
heat  of  summer  but  which  darkened  the  halls  and 
rooms  of  the  mansion.  These  porches  were  often 
as  tall  as  the  house  itself  and  their  roofs  were  up 
held  by  rows  of  huge  white  columns,  which  gave 
even  a  second  rate  or  "tumble-down"  place  a 
grandeur  that  was  supposed  to  impress  the  visitor 
and  proclaim  the  dignity  of  the  master  and  the 
size  of  his  estate. 

71 


72  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Inside  the  house  there  was  a  wide  hall  and  an 
ample  stairway  leading  to  another  hall  on  the 
second  floor.  From  the  hall  on  the  first  floor  one 
entered  the  parlors,  the  library,  and  the  dining- 
room;  on  the  second  floor  were  the  living-rooms  of 
the  family.  Ceilings  were  high  everywhere,  and 
windows  tall  and  wide;  but  carpets  were  of  plain 
design,  when  there  were  carpets  at  all.  On  the 
walls  there  were  portraits  of  worshipful  ancestors, 
a  steel  engraving  of  George  Washington,  a  battle 
scene  of  the  Revolution,  and  a  painting  of  Calhoun 
or  Clay  addressing  the  United  States  Senate.  Fur 
niture  was  as  a  rule  plain  but  somewhat  mas 
sive.  Of  servants  there  were  always  plenty  and  to 
spare,  for  the  number  of  servants  rather  than  the 
elegance  of  the  outfit  advertised  the  wealth  and 
dignity  of  the  family. 

A  half -score  of  sons  and  daughters,  a  tall,  lank, 
and  rather  weatherworn  gentleman,  and  a  slender, 
soft-voiced,  weary-looking  mother  composed  the 
family  group,  unless  one  counts  the  inevitable 
guest  or  old-maiden  cousin  who,  like  the  furniture 
or  the  servants,  always  formed  part  of  a  planter's 
household.  Though  it  was  not  good  form  to  labor 
with  one's  own  hands,  yet  both  master  and  mistress 
knew  how  to  perform  most  of  the  work  that  was 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  73 

daily  done  by  the  blacks.  The  younger  mem 
bers  of  the  family  took  pride  in  their  immunity 
from  the  work  that  is  the  lot  of  most  men.  Soft 
hands  and  ignorance  of  the  vocabulary  of  labor 
and  trade  were  considered  especially  becoming. 
Nor  was  the  toil  of  the  fields  or  drudgery  of  the 
house  more  attractive  then  and  there  than  now 
and  here.  The  injunction  of  Holy  Writ  to  "mul 
tiply  and  replenish  the  earth"  was  obeyed;  but 
the  truth  that  "in  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt 
thou  eat  bread,  till  thou  return  unto  the  ground " 
made  little  appeal,  for  was  not  the  negro  created 
by  God  to  do  the  work  of  the  white  man?  His  skin 
was  black  and  proof  against  the  heat  of  summer; 
he  delighted  in  the  streaming  rays  of  torrid  suns; 
and  he  preferred  to  sleep  at  noonday  with  his  face 
to  the  sky.  Negro  women  made  beds,  cleaned 
houses,  and  cooked  the  meals  of  the  planters,  while 
negro  boys  and  girls  served  them  at  table  in  the 
great  dining-room.  Horses  were  groomed  and 
harnessed,  cows  were  fed  and  milked,  and  morning 
fires  were  made  by  negro  hands.  If  one  wanted  a 
glass  of  water,  a  servant  was  ready  to  bring  it  fresh 
from  the  well;  if  flies  disturbed  the  guest,  and  flies 
always  disturbed  everybody,  there  were  boys  to  fan 
them  away  and  to  keep  the  atmosphere  in  motion. 


74  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

In  return  for  personal  service  the  negroes  were 
supplied  with  cabins  —  one  for  each  family.  These 
cabins  were  built  of  logs,  the  crevices  daubed  with 
clay,  and  the  roofs  made  of  clapboards  or  shingles. 
There  was  one  broad  fireplace  at  which  meals  were 
cooked  and  served  and  clothes  were  washed,  and 
around  which  the  little  negroes  gathered  when  the 
weather  was  cold  or  rainy.  There  were  beds  and 
mats  and  quilts  for  sleeping  accommodations. 
Some  slept  on  the  beds,  some  on  the  floor  with  their 
feet  to  the  fireplace,  and  some  in  the  attic.  There 
was  no  waste  space  in  a  negro  cabin. 
*  The  slaves  raised  pigs  and  chickens,  and  had 
gardens  in  which  they  grew  sweet  potatoes  for 
themselves  and,  in  the  upper  South,  tobacco  plants 
in  the  fence  corners  about  the  "quarters."  Every 
week  the  master  allowed  each  grown  person  four 
pounds  of  meat,  a  peck  of  meal,  and  a  quart  of 
molasses,  with  something  over  for  the  little  ones. 
The  rest  the  slave  was  expected  to  find  for  himself 
—  the  Sunday  chicken,  the  "greens"  from  the 
garden,  and  the  potatoes  from  the  cache  in  which 
they  were  stored  away  from  the  cold.  The  older 
slaves  were  allowed  to  keep  dogs  and  to  hunt  coons 
and  'possums  at  night  and,  now  and  then,  squirrels 
and  rabbits  by  day.  The  negro  is  even  now  the 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  75 

inveterate  enemy  of  the  rabbit.  Little  negroes 
played  and  romped  in  the  "  quarters, "  in  the  barns, 
and  even  in  the  great  house;  they  climbed  the 
tallest  trees,  and  they  put  their  black  faces  out  of 
every  window  of  the  cabins  when  visitors  were 
around.  Their  clothing  was  like  the  annals  of  the 
poor,  short  and  simple,  merely  a  shirt  which 
reached  to  the  knees.  Shoes  and  hats  were  useless 
encumbrances  for  pickaninnies  in  winter  as  well  as 
in  summer.  Older  negroes  received  a  new  suit  of 
clothes,  two  pairs  of  shoes,  and  a  cheap  hat  each 
year,  and  at  Christmas  time  a  little  liquor,  some 
trinkets  for  the  women,  and  a  small  sum  of  spend 
ing  money.  Masters  and  servants  lived  much  to 
gether  on  the  smaller  plantations,  and  white  and 
black  children  played  together  whether  on  great 
places  or  small.  f 

It  was  acommunitvjl^  Each  member  felt 
closer  to  the  others  than  is  now  generally  supposed. 
When  the  old  master  or  the  old  mistress  died, 
there  was  genuine  sorrow  in  the  "quarters"  and  a 
long  train  of  black  mourners  followed  the  remains 
to  the  grave,  for  the  break-up  of  plantations  was 
as  distressing  to  slaves  as  to  their  owners.  When 
slaves  died,  their  remains,  neatly  dressed,  were 
laid  away  in  plain  coffins  in  the  "God's  acre" 


76  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

of  the  plantation.  The  death  of  a  slave  was 
lamented  as  much  in  the  mansion  as  in  the 
"  quarters,"  and  every  attention  was  given  the  sick. 
Indeed  the  oversight  of  the  health  of  the  slaves, 
always  ignorant  and  sometimes  reckless,  was  a 
burden  of  life  which  the  mistress  seldom  evaded. 
Family  physicians  attended  negroes  as  well  as 
masters ;  and  on  great  estates  there  were  chaplains 
to  bury  the  dead,  to  officiate  in  plantation  chapels, 
and  to  ask  blessings  at  the  planter's  table.  But 
the  white  chaplain  was  not  popular  with  the 
negroes.  They  preferred  to  sit  in  the  galleries  01* 
annexes  of  the  white  churches  or  to  worship  under 
the  guidance  of  their  own  preachers  where  white 
people  did  not  intrude,  and  where  they  could, 
under  such  auspices,  indulge  without  restraint  in 
weird  chants,  bodily  contortions,  and  loud  shrieks. 
If  the  master  was  niggardly  in  the  matter  of 
dress  for  his  slaves,  he  was  also  rather  indifferent 
about  his  own  clothes.  It  had  long  been  a  mark  of 
distinction  in  a  gentleman  of  Virginia  to  dress  in 
shabby  or  last  year's  suits;  and  what  was  good 
form  in  the  Old  Dominion  was  good  form  in  the 
cotton  country.  Nor  were  the  women  fastidious. 
Elegant  silks  and  gay  bonnets  then,  as  always, 
delighted  their  hearts,  but  the  tyranny  of  seasons 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  77 

and  of  fashions  did  not  rule  the  plantations.  In 
Washington,  however,  where  Southerners  were 
always  on  dress  parade,  at  Saratoga,  or  at  the 
Virginia  springs,  planters'  wives  followed  the  Pa 
risian  styles,  wore  costly  jewels,  and  drove  hand 
some  equipages.  There  the  absentee  mistress  of 
even  a  small  number  of  slaves  was  at  her  social 
best,  and  her  dinners,  her  salons,  her  balls  were 
"the  rage."  One  thinks  here  of  Mrs.  Stephen  A. 
Douglas,  Mrs.  Jefferson  Davis,  and  Mrs.  William 
Gwin,  the  wife  of  Senator  Gwin  of  California. 

In  Charleston,  Mobile,  and  New  Orleans  men  of 
business,  lawyers  who  owned  country  estates,  and 
merchants  whose  names  were  known  in  New  York 
and  Boston,  were  more  careful  to  maintain  the 
fashion  and  dressed  more  like  the  Prince  of  Wales 
than  was  the  custom  on  the  plantations.  After 
all,  the  democracy  of  Jefferson  was  waning,  and  in 
these  centers  the  women  generally  dressed,  much 
as  they  do  today,  to  display  the  riches  of  their 
husbands;  they  were  living  advertisements  of  the 
family  standing.  To  drive  at  six  o'clock  upon  the 
Battery,  to  dance  at  twelve  o'clock  at  St.  Cecilia's, 
and  to  have  a  pew  at  St.  Michael's  were  evidences 
of  success  that  none  could  have  misunderstood. 

Travel  was  a  part  of  every  Southern  planter's 


78  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

life.  Before  the  day  of  railroads  the  family 
carriage  was  an  institution.  Large,  cumbersome, 
swung  high  on  suspension  springs,  it  rocked  and 
rolled  along  the  rough  roads  of  the  lower  South 
with  all  the  dignity  of  a  limousine  and  with  much 
more  picturesqueness.  It  was  trimmed  with  brass 
and  gold  and  usually  had  the  family  coat  of  arms 
adorning  the  doors.  There  were  light  metal  steps 
on  which  the  ladies  mounted  and  which  were 
pulled  in  when  the  door  closed,  leaving  the  un 
initiated  wondering  how  the  precious  freight  was 
loaded  on  or  off.  The  horses  were  groomed  and 
harnessed  in  the  best  of  style,  and  high  upon  the 
box  sat  a  majestic  son  of  Africa,  the  happiest 
product  of  the  plantation  system.  Such  an  outfit 
one  might  see  any  day  upon  a  lonely  country  road 
making  its  way  for  miles  or  hundreds  of  miles  to 
visit  neighbors  or  kindred  in  distant  States. 

Sometimes  these  Southern  gentlefolk  were  on 
their  way  to  New  Orleans  or  Charleston  to  see  the 
races.  In  summer  they  were  likely  to  be  seeking 
the  way  to  Pass  Christian  for  the  Gulf  bathing 
beaches  or  else  they  wandered  farther  away  to  the 
mountains  of  North  Carolina,  in  order  perchance 
that  the  planter  might  take  part  in  a  caucus  of 
South  Carolina  politicians.  But  wherever  they 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  79 

went  they  stayed  weeks  or  months  to  get  the  worth 
of  their  long  journey.  To  travel  all  the  way  from 
Alabama  to  Old  Virginia  was  no  small  undertaking 
even  to  the  tough  and  wiry  frames  of  our  ante 
bellum  planters  and  there  was  therefore  much 
necessary  hospitality  on  the  way.  If  one  may 
believe  some  of  the  contemporary  accounts,  how 
ever,  there  was  often  a  good  deal  of  querying  and 
wagging  of  heads  when  the  outriders,  the  drivers, 
and  the  horses,  not  to  mention  the  gentlemen  and 
ladies  who  clambered  out  of  these  overland  arks, 
all  settled  down  at  a  distant  cousin's  for  a  month's 
sojourn. 

Still,  all  was  not  plantation  routine,  dress,  and 
travel.  In  the  great  house  there  was  a  library 
which  was  likely  to  be  the  home  of  law  books,  of 
histories,  of  English  novels,  and  of  handsomely 
bound  Greek  and  Latin  classics.  There  were 
quarterly  reviews  on  the  library  tables;  and  a  file 
of  the  Charleston  Mercury,  the  New  Orleans 
Picayune,  or  the  Richmond  Enquirer  stood  on  the 
lower  shelves  of  the  bookcases.  The  debates  in 
Congress  were  read  everywhere,  for  Congress  was 
the  arena  in  which  great  Southerners  displayed 
their  talents  and  endeavored  to  thwart  their  rivals 


80  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

and  opponents  from  the  North.  The  most  sacred 
of  all  public  documents  was  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  which  many  could  repeat  verbatim 
from  start  to  finish.  But  South  Carolinians  alone 
felt  the  necessity  and  the  duty  of  remembering 
two  constitutions  at  all  times  and  upon  all  oc 
casions. 

The  Virginia  Bill  of  Rights,  the  Virginia  and 
Kentucky  Resolutions,  and  Madison's  Report  of 
1799  were  only  a  little  less  sacred  to  emigres  of  the 
Old  Dominion  in  the  lower  South.  Of  course,  New 
England  periodicals  gave  place  to  the  Southern 
Review,  published  in  the  sacred  Carolina  city,  to 
De  Bow's  Review  of  New  Orleans,  and  especially  to 
the  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  which  always 
brought  with  it  something  of  the  atmosphere  of 
Richmond  and  was  hardly  less  dear  to  the  South 
ern  heart  than  Charleston  itself.  But  while  the 
North  American  Review  and  the  Knickerbocker 
Magazine  seldom  gained  a  place  on  Southern 
tables,  Harper's  Magazine  and,  just  before  the  war, 
Harper's  Weekly  found  many  readers  in  the  South. 

While  law  and  propaganda  held  large  places  in 
the  thought  of  the  lower  South,  there  was  time 
and  interest  left  for  the  lighter  literature  which  so 
many  men  have  regarded  as  a  test  of  culture  — 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  81 

belles-lettres,  as  the  people  of  1850  were  prone  to  say. 
Walter  Scott's  romanticism  and  hero-worship 
suited  their  taste  and  braced  their  social  system, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  and  he  furnished  matter 
enough  for  the  longest  of  the  idle  days  of  a  lonely 
cotton  plantation.  Marmion  and  Ivanhoe  and  the 
Heart  of  Midlothian  were  common  intellectual 
property  in  all  parts  of  the  South.  Yet  Byron  with 
his  reckless  love  of  the  lawless  and,  later,  Thack 
eray  with  his  quiet  but  effective  irony  won  the 
hearts  of  readers.  In  fact,  every  English  writer  of 
standing  made  an  appeal  to  the  planters  so  long 
as  he  did  not  attack  their  beloved  institution  of 
slavery.  The  planters  were  consciously  returning 
to  a  former  allegiance.  It  was  the  English,  not  the 
budding  New  England,  literature  which  won  them, 
although  Charles  Dickens  with  his  tearful  stories 
was  too  much  for  Southern  digestion;  and  on  his 
Southern  tour  in  1859  this  great  author  fortunately 
did  not  pass  beyond  Richmond. 

If  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  the  cotton  kingdom 
liked  to  read  the  better  English  writers,  they  also 
readily  turned  to  the  older  classics.  Doctor  John 
son  and  Oliver  Goldsmith  and,  above  all,  Shake 
speare  were  found  upon  every  shelf  and  were  read 
and  reread  for  their  content  as  well  as  for  their 


82  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

oti^fJ  ja-^s-ot--'  y-K  *•'  v  <'~r         (M  '^  ca 

form  and  style.  The  plays  of  Shakespeare  were 
presented  in  Charleston  long  before  they  found 
a  hearing  in  Boston  and  Philadelphia;  and  Rich 
mond,  Mobile,  New  Orleans,  and  Memphis  readily 
furnished  large  audiences  for  the  greater  English 
playwrights  even  before  those  cities  became  popu 
lous.  Planters  who  had  been  educated  at  the 
University  of  Virginia  or  who  had  traveled  in 
Europe  took  up  their  winter  residence  in  the 
nearest  cities,  in  order  to  enjoy  the  art  of  the  elder 
Booth,  who  made  his  American  debut  in  Peters 
burg  in  1821,  or  to  hear  the  Barber  of  Seville,  given 
in  New  Orleans  every  winter,  or  to  sit  in  Charles 
ton  for  portraits  by  the  painters  De  Veaux  and 
Eraser.  Although  New  Orleans  was  the  first  city 
in  America  to  give  serious  attention  to  opera  and 
always  maintained  close  ties  with  Paris,  Southern 
ers  did  not  develop  their  love  for  music,  painting, 
or  sculpture  beyond  the  level  of  the  amateur. 

Aside  from  portraits  which  they  liked  to  have 
made  for  their  ancestral  halls,  some  promising 
efforts  at  sculpture,  which  made  a  beginning  in 
Richmond  before  1860,  and  the  mere  pleasure  of 
hearing  good  music,  the  planter's  taste  for  the  fine 
arts  made  little  progress.  His  life  did  not  lend 
itself  to  that  form  of  expression.  To  be  sure, 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  83 

Gottschalk  was  born  in  New  Orleans,  and  there 
was  an  Academy  of  Design  in  Charleston ;  but  the 
former  never  counted  America  his  musical  home, 
and  the  Academy  had  only  a  fitful  existence. 

From  Thomas  Jefferson,  who  enjoyed  his  Homer 
to  the  last  year  of  his  long  and  busy  life,  to  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Benjamin  Palmer  of  New  Orleans,  plant 
ers  of  both  the  tobacco  and  the  cotton-growing 
regions  held  firmly  to  the  old  idea  that  a  liberal 
education  could  not  possibly  be  based  upon  any 
other  foundation  than  the  languages  and  litera 
tures  of  the  ancients.  Perhaps  they  received  this 
idea  from  their  European  ancestors;  or,  like  Goethe 
in  his  old  age,  they  may  have  rediscovered  Rome 
and  Greece.  Whatever  the  cause  of  their  early 
liking  for  the  classics,  the  preachers  of  early  Pres- 
byterianism,  missionaries  trained  in  the  methods 
and  the  theology  of  Princeton,  carried  Latin  and 
Greek  wherever  they  went.  They  prayed  in  Eng 
lish  but  kept  their  Greek  grammars  in  their  pockets, 
and  every  aspirant  for  education  or  leadership  in 
the  Southern  backwoods  was  set  to  work  on  Latin 
forms  and  Greek  roots.  In  a  hundred  log  "col 
leges"  during  the  first  thirty  years  of  the  nine 
teenth  century,  Southern  youths  labored  over  their 
classics  from  sun  to  sun,  like  the  slaves  in  the  fields. 


84  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Calhoun,  McDuffie,  and  scores  of  other  well- 
known  leaders,  were  the  product  of  these  schools. 
Both  preachers  and  politicians  made  long  quota 
tions  from  Virgil  and  Homer  and  Horace  to  prove 
their  education  and  to  practise  their  learning. 
Young  men  wrestled  with  pronunciation  and  old 
men  spent  their  spare  hours  in  the  shade  of  friend 
ly  oaks  mastering  the  thoughts  of  Plato  and  Aris 
totle  in  the  original.  At  social  gatherings  and  at 
even  graver  meetings  men  wrangled  about  the 
correct  renderings  of  passages  from  their  favorite 
authors. 

In  such  an  atmosphere  as  this  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  colleges  of  the  lower  South  long  remained 
essentially  schools  of  Greek  and  Latin.  Yet  men 
could  not  write  popular  books  or  political  ha 
rangues  in  the  languages  of  Homer  and  Cicero,  even 
though  they  did  assign  ancient  names  to  thousands 
of  their  political  pamphlets.  The  challenge  of 
Irving  and  Cooper  and  Hawthorne  was  constantly 
before  them,  and  even  the  most  loyal  of  the  classi 
cists  felt  this  new  pull  away  from  their  toilsome 
pages.  Aside  from  the  serious  reviews  already 
mentioned  and  the  excellent  literary  pages  of  the 
better  daily  and  weekly  papers,  Southerners  felt 
that  they  must  produce  fruits  worthy  of  their 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  85 

civilization  if  they  would  stand  unabashed  in  the 
presence  of  the  rest  of  mankind. 

The  greatest  and  best  of  the  cotton-planter  poets 
and  novelists  was  William  Gilmore  Simms  of 
Charleston  (1806-1870),  who  at  the  age  of  twenty 
published  his  Lyrical  and  Other  Poems.  This 
volume,  however,  fell  flat  from  the  press  and  found 
no  response  from  the  severely  classical  gentle 
men  of  Charleston  who  measured  everything  by 
the  standard  of  "Mr.  Pope"  or  "Mr.  Dryden." 
Simms  tried  again  and  yet  again  —  a  score  of 
times  —  till  more  than  twenty  volumes  of  verse 
came  from  his  pen.  Though  he  imitated  the  vein 
now  of  Scott,  now  of  Byron,  he  somehow  failed  to 
attract  the  planters.  Then  Simms  tried  the  writing 
of  novels,  and  in  1834  he  published  Guy  Rivers, 
which  yielded  him  a  small  bank  account.  The 
next  year  he  brought  out  two  other  works,  The 
Yemassee  and  the  Partisan,  each  of  which  passed 
rapidly  through  two  or  three  editions  and  made 
his  name  known  in  London  better  than  in  the  lower 
South.  Although  the  planters  felt  the  need  of  a 
native  literature  and  even  organized  clubs  for  its 
encouragement,  they  did  not  read  enough  con 
temporary  books  to  recognize  the  merit  of  one  of 
their  own  writers  when  he  appeared. 

Y    » J&" 


86  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Simms  himself,  though  perhaps  the  only  South 
erner  in  all  ante-bellum  history  who  could  say  so, 
complained  that  the  fact  that  he  earned  his  living 
by  his  pen  prevented  his  recognition  in  the  best 
Carolina  circles.  It  was  a  curious  contradiction 
in  the  planter  life;  but  Simms  continued  his  efforts 
to  give  the  South  a  native  literature  until  he  was 
the  author  of  nearly  a  hundred  volumes  and  until 
he  was  recognized  in  both  North  and  South  as  a 
great  writer.  To  be  sure,  his  romances  reminded 
one  of  Cooper  and  even  of  Scott;  still,  the  subjects 
were  Southern,  and  many  of  his  characters  were 
original  and  charming  and  one  or  two  were  unsur 
passed.  When  the  great  war  came  he  was  living 
in  style  at  his  country  place,  a  great  library  around 
him  and  guests  always  at  his  table.  What  more 
could  one  ask? 

Of  less  importance  but  distinctly  a  planter  in 
character  was  John  Pendleton  Kennedy  (1795- 
1870)  whose  Swallow  Barn  (1832)  and  Horseshoe 
Robinson  (1835)  portrayed  planter  life  and  Caro 
lina  ideals  in  ways  that  gave  their  author  as  much 
recognition  as  could  be  afforded  by  men  who  were 
very  busy  with  their  negroes  and  their  politics. 
Although  the  writings  and  the  methods  of  Ken 
nedy  are  remarkably  similar  to  those  of  Irving, 


i~C <»*•«*•''    f>  tt->«^-*-  *** 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  87 

there  was  enough  originality  in  these  works  to 
entitle  them  Ho  much  more  attention  than  they 
now  receive.  The  pictures  of  country  life,  of  the 
'squire  of  the  county  court,  of  the  mistress  of  a 
plantation,  and  of  great  neighborhood  dinners  are 
delightful  and  bear  more  than  a  single  reading.  So 
well  was  his  talent  recognized  in  England,  we  are 
told,  that  Thackeray  asked  Kennedy  to  write  the 
fourth  chapter  of  his  famous  Virginians  and  tra 
dition  has  it  that  the  request  was  complied  with. 

Good  though  the  work  of  Simms  and  Kennedy 
was,  the  best  of  the  planter  South  was  found  in  its 
poetry.  Aside  from  minor  lawyer-poets  and  the 
miraculous  My  Life  is  Like  the  Summer,  of  Richard 
Henry  Wilde,  the  lower  South  produced  two  men  of 
genius  —  Timrod  and  Hayne,  who  were  inspired 
and  trained  by  Simms  in  Charleston,  although  it 
took  the  disasters  of  the  Civil  War  to  bring  out 
their  greatness. 

Troubled  all  his  life  by  poverty,  lonely  beyond 
the  fate  of  most  mortals,  and  stricken  for  many 
years  with  tuberculosis,  Henry  Timrod  (1829-1867) 
hastened  to  his  grave  without  having  done  half 
his  work.  His  Cotton  Boll,  The  Lily  Confidante, 
and  Vision  of  Poesy  show  the  artist  of  more  than 
mere  talent.  But  the  times  were  out  of  joint  and 


88  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

when  peace  came  he  was  exhausted.  His  equal 
was  never  produced  in  the  lower  South. 

Although  his  friend  Paul  Hamilton  Hayne 
(1830-1886)  wrote  more  and  had  the  satisfaction 
of  seeing  his  works  more  frequently  in  bound 
volumes,  he  was  hardly  the  equal  of  the  author  of 
The  Cotton  Boll.  Hayne  published  three  volumes 
before  1860,  and  he  lived  to  bring  out  in  Phila 
delphia  and  New  York  still  other  volumes  after 
the  great  struggle  was  over.  Because  in  all  these 
works  he  speaks  as  a  Southerner  he  ultimately  won 
from  English  critics  the  title  "Laureate  of  the 
South."  But  the  great  planter  regime  never  quite 
recognized  him,  nor  were  his  royalties  drawn  from 
their  purses.  Like  Simms,  he  clung  resolutely  to 
his  section  and  defended  its  cause  and  ideals  to  his 
dying  hour.  But  he  defended  them  in  a  lonely 
cottage  in  Georgia  where  he  spent  the  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life  earning  his  livelihood  in  the  "sweat 
of  his  brow,"  seeking  still  to  give  aid  now  and 
then  from  his  slender  stores  to  his  more  unfortu 
nate  friends,  Timrod  and  Simms. 

But  Simms,  Timrod,  and  Hayne  were  after  all 
only  echoes  of  that  greater  world  of  literature  of 
which  Scott,  Byron,  and  Dickens  were  the  mas 
ters,  and  they  belonged  by  tradition  to  English 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  89 

literature.  There  was  a  more  original  and  there 
fore  more  important  group  of  writers  who  lived  in 
the  lower  South  and  who  finished  their  work  before 
the  war  began.  The  chief  of  these  were  the  Rev. 
Augustus  Baldwin  Longstreet  (1790-1870),  Wil 
liam  Tappan  Thompson  (1812-1882),  Johnson 
Jones  Hooper  (1815-1863),  and  Joseph  G.  Baldwin 
(1815-1864).  In  1834  Longstreet  published,  in 
sportive  mood,  his  Georgia  Scenes,  in  which  he 
portrayed  the  homely  life  and  fun  of  the  poorer 
white  people  of  the  lower  South. 

Longstreet  made  the  fisticuffs,  the  cock-fights, 
and  the  horse-swappings  of  county  court  days  the 
subjects  of  his  writing,  and  few  have  equaled  him 
in  his  chosen  field.  His  neighbor  and  partner  in 
the  management  of  a  rural  newspaper,  William 
Tappan  Thompson,  published  in  1840  Major 
Jones's  Courtship,  which  continued  the  same  kind 
of  work.  This  book  won  immediate  success,  and 
its  homely  scenes  the  simpler  folk  in  all  parts  of 
the  South  still  remember.  Of  less  importance  but 
well  worth  reading  is  Johnson  Hooper  of  Alabama. 
Hooper  made  the  rascally,  trifling  fellow  who 
swindled  his  neighbors  or  ran  away  from  his  family 
his  special  favorite,  and  Simon  Suggs  is  his  best 
creation. 


90  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Of  a  higher  order  was  the  work  of  Joseph  G. 
Baldwin,  also  of  Alabama,  who  made  Virginia  his 
especial  field  in  a  series  of  articles  which  he  pub 
lished  in  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger.  That 
Baldwin  had  read  Irving  is  perfectly  plain;  but 
his  treatment  of  Virginia  subjects  and  characters 
is  so  original  and  mirth-provoking  that  few  can 
read  his  pages  today  without  enjoyment.  It  was 
a  sort  of  second  Knickerbocker's  tales  which  he 
finally  gathered  together  and  published  under  the 
title  of  Flush  Times  in  Alabama  and  Mississippi 
(1853).  It  was  not  so  much  character-sketches  as 
humorous  description  which  Baldwin  presented. 

In  this  group  of  writers  one  sees  today  the  pred 
ecessors  of  Mark  Twain  —  whose  parents,  in  fact, 
came  from  this  very  region.  The  grotesque  and 
the  absurd  are  here  the  special  veins  of  men  who 
seek  not  to  teach  men  anything  nor  to  show  that 
the  South  could  produce  a  literature.  What  they 
saw  and  heard  in  their  daily  intercourse  wTith 
common  men  they  endeavored  to  reproduce  in 
book  form.  A  half  a  century  later  Mark  Twain 
and  Bret  Harte,  doubtless  familiar  with  their 
works  and  living  among  people  essentially  similar, 
followed  up  their  methods  and  won  international 
repute. 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  91 

After  all,  the  life  of  the  plain  people  of  the  lower 
South  is  more  important  than  that  which  dis 
played  itself  in  the  great  houses,  at  the  races,  or  at 
the  resorts.  This  life  was  not  altogether  so  crude 
and  raw  as  Longstreet  depicted  it,  nor  was  it  so 
much  out  of  sympathy  with  the  planter  ideal  as 
Frederick  Law  Olmsted  represented  in  his  Sea- 
board  Slave  States  (1856)  and  Journey  in  the  Back 
Country  (1860). 

The  farmers  and  the  tenants,  the  piney-woods 
people  and  the  mountaineers  were  like  farmers  and 
tenants  elsewhere.  The  larger  number  of  them 
lived  in  fairly  comfortable  log  or  frame  houses  of 
one  or  two  rooms.  There  were  few  pretensions  to 
beauty  of  situation  or  elegance  of  outfit.  The 
house  stood  upon  the  roadside,  by  a  fresh-flowing 
spring,  or  among  the  great  pine  trees.  The  door 
was  so  roughly  made  that  it  creaked  on  its  hinges, 
dragged  across  the  floor,  and  had  to  be  fastened 
with  a  latch  which  was  lifted  from  the  outside  by  a 
string  put  through  a  small  hole.  The  wide  fire 
place,  here  as  in  the  negro  cabin,  was  the  center  of 
all  family  activity.  By  its  side  stood  a  great  crane 
which  swung  back  and  forth  the  large  pots  and 
kettles  for  cooking  the  greens,  bacon,  and  mush, 
the  staples  of  Southern  middle-class  fare.  The 


92  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

crane  was  the  object  of  wonderment  to  small  boys 
who  loved  nothing  better  than  to  set  it  in  motion 
and  hear  its  strange  but  comforting  song  as  it 
was  pulled  from  over  the  crackling  fire.  In  the 
chimney-corner  there  were  a  grindstone,  a  scythe, 
and  a  great  bundle  of  broom  straw  tied  against  the 
wall  and  kept  out  of  the  rain.  In  this  living-room 
the  mother  of  the  half  score  of  farmer's  children 
did  her  work  day  in  and  day  out,  cooking,  washing, 
and  ironing  for  the  growing  family.  She  was  the 
first  to  rise  in  the  morning  and  the  last  to  retire 
at  night. 

If  the  family  owned  a  negro  family,  a  single  cabin 
was  provided  near  the  larger  one,  and  there  in 
miniature  the  life  of  the  master  was  re-lived  from 
day  to  day,  except  that  the  farmer's  wife  tended 
the  black  children  as  well  as  her  own,  in  order  that 
every  one  who  could  might  work  in  the  fields  with 
the  stalwart  farmer  and  his  sons.  The  life  of  such 
a  master  and  such  a  slave  was  hard  and  monoto 
nous  —  the  harder  and  the  more  monotonous  in 
proportion  as  the  master  was  more  or  less  "on  the 
make, "  for  the  ambition  of  such  a  man  was  to  be 
the  owner  of  a  big  plantation. 

There  was  little  in  such  a  household  that  sug 
gested  books  and  papers  or  politics  and  religion. 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  93 

On  the  plain  board  table  which  stood  in  the  center 
of  the  best  room  there  was  a  big  family  Bible  with 
possibly  a  copy  of  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress  by 
its  side.  From  the  joists  were  suspended  bags  of 
seed-corn,  dried  fruit,  and  great  pods  of  red  pepper; 
there  was  a  great  pine  chest  in  the  corner  in  which 
the  best  quilts  and  home-woven  counterpanes  were 
securely  kept  against  the  day  when  "company" 
came;  over  the  door  hung  the  rifle  and  by  its  side 
the  powder  horn  which  had  done  service  at  King's 
Mountain  or  even  in  the  border  wars  of  Scotland 
in  behalf  of  Cameron  or  McDougal  clans. 

Outside  the  house  was  the  kennel  with  always 
two  or  three  dogs  which,  added  to  the  neighboring 
hounds,  readily  made  a  pack  for  a  chase  after  fox 
or  deer.  The  barns  and  stables  were  built  of  logs 
and  were  none  too  large  or  comfortable  for  the 
stock.  Chickens,  ducks,  and  pigs  were  always  to 
be  found  and  there  was  constant  noise,  now  of  one, 
now  of  the  other,  clucking,  squawking,  and  squeal 
ing  each  according  to  its  kind.  The  garden  was 
large  and  fertile.  From  it  came  cabbages,  pota 
toes,  beans,  and  roasting  ears  in  abundance  for 
both  whites  and  blacks;  and  there  were  flowers 
along  the  borders,  a  pear  tree  in  one  corner,  and 
a  great  scuppernong  arbor  in  another.  If  there 


94  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

were  no  great  cotton  crops,  there  were  enough 
corn,  potatoes,  pork,  and  fowls  to  feed  a  numerous 
family. 

Another  and  a  lower  grade  of  society  lived  on  the 
waste  lands  and  pine  barrens  and  among  the  re 
mote  mountains.  Of  this  life  Olmsted  writes  con 
amore.  It  was  less  wholesome  and  less  promising 
than  that  which  has  just  been  described.  Larger 
families  lived  in  small  and  dirty  cabins  where  all 
slept  in  one  room.  Beds  were  filthy  and  filled 
with  vermin  and  the  floors  were  often  the  common 
mother  earth  covered  with  trash  or  straw.  These 
people  showed  little  ambition  for  the  larger  planta 
tion  life  and  little  hope  of  personal  or  family  better 
ment.  They  were  contented  to  hunt  on  the  lands 
of  the  planters,  to  fish  for  shad  in  the  streams, 
and  even  to  steal  from  the  herds  of  their  richer 
neighbors.  Their  dress  was  not  unlike  that  of  the 
slaves.  Not  a  solitary  book  adorned  their  houses, 
nor  were  the  morals  of  these  illiterate  whites  higher 
than  those  of  slaves.  Reading  and  writing  were  as 
good  as  lost  arts  to  them.  The  visitor  or  stranger 
who  happened  to  pause  at  their  cabin  doors  was 
stared  at  with  curious  and  inquisitive  eyes.  To 
such  a  family  a  five-dollar  piece  was  a  rare  thing 
indeed;  but  whisky  was  so  common  that  rough 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE  95 

and  fatal  duels  were  fought  on  sight.  There  were 
the  inevitable  gun  and  powder  horn,  the  lean  and 
hungry  hound,  and  a  few  chickens  and  ducks. 
There  was  usually  a  single  stable  which  housed  an 
aged  horse,  and  there  was  certain  to  be  a  pig  in  a 
filthy  sty. 

Among  the  farmers  and  tenants,  the  poor  whites 
and  mountaineers,  there  was  indifference  toward 
the  great  planters  of  the  South  but  no  real  hostility 
save  in  remote  highland  districts;  and  even  the 
hostility  of  the  mountaineers  waned  as  improved 
means  of  transportation  brought  them  into  touch 
with  the  planters.  Never  did  these  highland  folk, 
however,  assume  a  friendly  or  sympathetic  attitude 
toward  the  slave.  The  so-called  "crackers,"  "red 
necks,"  and  "hill-billies"  had  not  as  yet  come  to 
hate  the  negroes,  for  they  little  thought  that  these 
would  ever  be  freedmen;  but  the  embers  of  hatred 
smoldered,  ready  to  be  fanned  into  flame  in  later 
years,  after  the  South  had  been  scourged  by  war 
and  transformed  by  an  industrial  revolution. 

Altogether  the  people  of  the  lower  South  were 
not  unlike  those  of  other  sections.  The  great 
planters  and  landowners  compared  favorably  with 
the  industrial  and  commercial  princes  of  the  East. 
Their  ideals  and  their  culture  were  taken  as  the 


96  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

standard  of  the  cotton  country ;  their  houses,  their 
liveries,  their  dress,  and  their  manners  were  the 
best  of  the  time.  Like  wealthy  men  of  all  ages, 
they  cultivated  the  arts  in  an  amateurish  fashion; 
they  loved  to  sit  to  artists  for  their  portraits, 
and  they  liked  to  read  good  books  or  at  any  rate 
put  them  upon  the  shelves  of  their  libraries.  It 
was  even  a  boast  of  the  most  enlightened  of  them 
before  1860  that  the  planter  was  not  only  a  reader 
of  books  and  a  patron  of  authors,  but  that  he  was 
himself  a  dabbler  in  belles-lettres.  What,  indeed, 
might  the  cotton  kingdom  not  become  if  left  to 
work  out  her  own  destiny? 


CHAPTER  V 

BELIGION    AND    EDUCATION 

CONTRARY  to  a  common  preconception,  the  people 
of  the  lower  Southern  States  were  sincerely  reli 
gious,  although  at  the  beginning  of  their  develop 
ment  as  a  peculiar  section  of  the  country,  they  had 
little  patience  with  what  was  called  revealed  re 
ligion.  From  the  University  of  South  Carolina, 
where  many  of  their  teachers  and  models  of  pro 
priety  were  trained,  there  came  the  strong  deistic 
utterances  of  Dr.  Thomas  Cooper,  famous  on  two 
continents.  Cooper  was  counted  one  of  the  great 
spirits  of  his  time.  Young  men  from  all  the  cotton  re 
gion  flocked  to  his  institution,  where  they  heard  him 
lecture  on  the  Pentateuch  after  the  critical  manner 
of  recent  years.  He  was  perhaps  the  first  teacher  in 
this  country  to  break  down  the  faith  of  men  in  the 
literal  inspiration  of  the  Bible.  South  Carolinians 
liked  the  scientific  spirit  which  took  nothing  for 
granted  —  at  least  that  was  their  attitude  in  1819. 

7  97 


98  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Of  greater  importance  was  the  example  of 
Thomas  Jefferson,  who  had  all  his  life  been  known 
iis  a  deist.  Late  in  his  career  Jefferson  founded  the 
University  of  Virginia  with  the  intention  that  no 
religious  creed  should  get  a  hearing  there.  A 
strong  agnosticism  prevailed  for  many  years  after 
his  death,  until  the  growing  religious  conservatism 
of  the  Virginians  compelled  the  new  University  to 
take  to  its  bosom  the  representatives  of  the  leading 
churches  as  guides  and  monitors  of  its  students. 
From  still  another  center  the  new  country  received 
quite  unorthodox,  if  not  deistic,  opinions.  Tran 
sylvania  University,  "a  seminary  of  true  repub 
licanism,"  was  located  at  Lexington,  Kentucky. 
Its  president,  Horace  Holley,  although  a  New 
Englander,  was  practically  a  deist.  Among  his 
four  or  five  hundred  students  there  were  always 
many  young  men  from  the  cotton  States  prepar 
ing  themselves  to  be  lawyers,  physicians,  and 
teachers.1 

1  The  Roman  Catholics  of  New  Orleans,  whose  easy-going  methods 
suited  some  twenty  or  thirty  thousand  merchants  and  planters,  con 
tributed  their  mite  in  the  direction  of  religious  orthodoxy.  In  New 
Orleans,  Baton  Rouge,  and  Mobile  there  was  a  nucleus  of  Catholicism 
that  might  under  better  skies  have  won  a  controlling  influence  in 
large  districts  of  the  cotton  kingdom.  It  did  not  so  fall  out,  however, 
and  the  Catholics  remained  one  of  the  minor  denominations  of  the 
planter  civilization. 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  99 

It  is  still  said  in  the  South  that,  although  there 
may  be  other  roads  to  the  Celestial  City,  no  gentle 
man  would  choose  any  but  the  Episcopalian  way. 
It  may  be  doubted  whether  there  were  twenty 
thousand  Episcopalians  in  all  the  region  from 
Charleston  to  Galveston  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
Civil  War,  yet  members  of  "the  church"  were 
almost  invariably  found  in  the  seats  of  the  mighty,, 
of  governors,  congressmen,  and  magistrates.  St. 
Michael's  Church  in  Charleston  was  the  West 
minster  of  the  cotton  country;  and  to  be  buried  in 
the  sacred  soil  of  that  parish  was  almost  as  good 
as  to  be  alive  in  less  favored  provinces.  In  Savan 
nah,  Montgomery,  Mobile,  and  New  Orleans,  the 
gentry  belonged  to  the  good  old  colonial  church 
whose  clergy  were  not  so  pious  themselves  as  to  be 
disagreeable  father  confessors.  To  own  a  hand 
somely  bound  prayer-book  and  to  occupy  the  fam 
ily  pew  once  a  year  was  evidence  enough  of  one's 
religious  regularity,  even  though  one  did  hazard 
great  stakes  in  the  Charleston  races.  No  curate 
thought  less  of  his  patron  for  his  interest  in  this 
sport. 

The  hard  work  of  saving  the  souls  of  common 
men  was  left  to  such  leaders  of  other  denominations 
as  the  Presbyterian  preachers  who  had  for  half  a 


100  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

century  taught  the  up-country  farmers  the  shorter 
catechism  and  the  Greek  roots.  Since  the  late 
colonial  days  young  and  muscular  Christian  mis 
sionaries,  nourished  upon  Calvin's  Institutes  and 
Virgil's  Mneid  at  the  College  of  New  Jersey, 
poured  into  the  Southern  up-country.  They 
preached  their  stern  and  unbending  doctrine  on 
the  Sabbath,  and  on  week-days  they  set  scores  of 
young  men  to  work  upon  the  classics.  From  sun 
rise  to  sunset  these  earnest  seekers  after  knowl 
edge  pored  over  their  Greek  and  Latin,  convinced 
that  the  salvation  of  their  souls  depended  upon  the 
memorizing  of  thousands  of  heroic  lines  or  upon 
explaining  to  their  masters  the  intricacies  of 
languages  that  had  not  been  spoken  by  any  con 
siderable  number  of  people  since  the  fall  of  Con 
stantinople. 

Men  and  preachers  trained  in  these  schools  were 
not  likely  to  endure  very  long  the  presence  of 
such  philosophers  as  Thomas  Cooper  or  to  mani 
fest  continued  devotion  to  the  inconsistencies  of 
such  dilettante  rationalists  as  Thomas  Jefferson: 
they  must  know  the  ground  they  stood  upon. 
Once  they  had  won  over  the  small  farmers  of  the 
hills  in  the  two  Carolinas  and  Georgia,  these 
teachers  of  a  sterner  faith  were  in  a  strategic 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  101 

position  when  small  farmers  became  big  cotton- 
planters  with  scores  of  slaves  about  them.  They 
took  command  in  these  three  States  before  1840. 
Presbyterians  became  governors  and  members  of 
Congress  without  waiting  for  the  consent  of  their 
religious  seniors.  The  president  of  the  University 
of  North  Carolina  was  a  Presbyterian  divine,  for 
all  the  world  like  the  good  Dr.  Witherspoon  of 
Princeton.  In  South  Carolina  President  Cooper 
was  brought  to  trial  for  his  "shameful  atheism" 
in  1834.  He  was  found  unfit  for  his  high  position 
and  promptly  turned  out  to  graze  at  eighty  years 
of  age!  John  H.  Thorn  well,  a  student  of  Cooper's, 
was  one  of  the  powers  behind  the  movement  and 
not  many  years  passed  before  he  was  himself  the 
president  of  the  University.  Not  to  be  outdone 
in  the  matter,  Thornwell  founded,  in  the  very 
shadow  of  the  University,  the  Southern  Presby 
terian  Theological  Seminary,  where  young  scions 
of  old  houses  could  thenceforth  be  instructed 
aright  in  the  vital  doctrines  of  the  great  Genevan. 
From  Cooper  and  Jefferson  to  Thornwell  and 
Calvin  was  a  long  road  to  travel  in  two  decades; 
but  the  South  Carolinians  went  the  whole  distance 
without  knowing  that  they  had  moved  from  their 
first  position.  What  South  Carolinians  did  was 


102  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

good  form,  and  other  Southerners  were  likely  to 
follow  suit.  Even  the  great  Calhoun  became  in 
terested  in  Calvinism  and  manifested  a  genuine 
concern  in  the  growing  religiosity  of  the  planters. 
But  the  Calvinist  meat  was  too  strong  for  babes. 
While  the  Presbyterians  put  poor  Cooper  to  rout, 
gave  the  professors  at  the  University  of  Virginia 
anxious  nights,  and  sent  President  Holley  hasten 
ing  away  from  Lexington,  they  did  not  hold  the 
more  illiterate  Southerners  of  the  hills  to  their  way 
of  thinking.  A  planter  might  be  a  good  Presby 
terian;  but  a  "cracker"  or  a  "'red  neck"  found 
the  Princeton  faith  too  drastic.  He  grasped  with 
difficulty  the  doctrines  of  the  divines.  Presby- 
terianism,  moreover,  grew  more  aristocratic  as  its 
members  became  more  wealthy  and  better  edu 
cated.  A  denomination  which  furnished  governors 
and  presidents  of  universities  could  not  have  its 
preachers  shedding  tears  in  the  pulpit  and  inter 
lining  their  hymns  for  ignorant  congregations. 

So  the  larger  part  of  the  work  of  saving  souls 
fell  to  Baptists  and  Methodists.  From  the  days  of 
Daniel  Marshall  and  his  wife,  half-illiterate  men 
had  traversed  every  county  of  the  South  and  had 
preached  in  bush  arbors  to  thousands  of  "dying 
men  and  women,"  whom  they  called  back  to  fullness 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  103 

of  life.  In  the  backwoods  of  South  Carolina, 
Georgia,  and  the  other  cotton  States  these  earnest, 
God-fearing  men  preached  and  prayed,  wept  and 
sang,  till  thousands  of  the  neglected  were  made 
conscious  of  their  individual  existence  and  of  their 
social  importance.  There  were  three  or  four 
hundred  thousand  of  these  converts  and  recruits, 
some  from  the  planters  of  the  coastal  plains,  more 
from  the  farmers  of  the  hills,  but  most  from  the 
poor  and  remote  settlements  where  people  were 
out  of  touch  with  the  currents  of  the  times.  Before 
1860  about  a  million  of  the  people  of  the  lower 
South  were  connected  with  the  churches,  and  of 
these  the  vast  majority  were  Baptists  and  Metho 
dists. 

Meantime  a  great  social  transformation  had 
taken  place  in  the  lower  South.  In  the  beginning 
nearly  all  these  people  had  been  opponents  of 
slavery  and  of  all  forms  of  privilege.  But,  as 

farmers  became  planters  and  landless  men  became , 

\ 

farmers  and  owners  of  their  "labor, "  opposition  to  ( 
slavery  and  privilege  almost  disappeared.  Even 
the  masses  of  poorer  people  and  church  members 
became  defenders  of  the  existing  regime.  While  the 
Catholics  and  the  Episcopalians  had  been  content 
to  let  civil  affairs  take  their  own  course  and  had 


104  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

promptly  adjusted  themselves  to  the  social  strati 
fications  which  they  saw  about  them,  the  other 
denominations  had  at  first  protested  and  then  had 
gone  into  the  highways  and  the  hedges  after  the 
inarticulate  masses  of  men,  only  to  find  in  the  end 
that  both  they  and  their  converts  became,  like 
their  older  religious  brethren,  conservatives  and 
owners  of  slaves. 

The  Methodist  and  Baptist  denominations  had 
wrought  a  similar  work  in  the  North.  Their  mis 
sionaries  carried  the  Gospel  to  the  East  and  to  the 
rising  West.  Jesse  Lee,  Peter  Cartwright,  Jona 
than  Going,  and  their  kind  preached  and  wept 
and  sang  in  New  England,  the  Middle  States,  and 
the  Northwest  until  the  common  people  were 
won.  Cartwright  said  that  the  power  of  the  Devil 
was  fairly  overcome  in  Illinois  and  Indiana  before 
1860.  Literally  millions  of  small  farmers  and  men 
without  property  joined  the  new  churches.  As 
time  went  on  most  of  these  men  became  well- 
dressed,  prosperous  citizens,  conscious  of  their 
worth.  In  the  absence  of  the  institution  of  slavery 
in  their  midst,  they  kept  to  the  early  idea  that  the 
holding  of  men  in  bondage  was  a  sin,  but  they  were 
not  disposed  to  attack  the  South  because  of  its 
slavery. 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  105 

In  1843  Orange  Scott,  a  very  able  preacher  of 
New  England,  stirred  the  consciences  of  his  Metho 
dist  followers  on  the  subject  of  slavery  in  much 
the  same  way  that  Garrison  was  stirring  the  minds 
of  deists  and  agnostics.  But  the  leaders  of  the  de 
nomination  refused  to  be  stirred.  Scott  then  with 
drew  from  the  church  and  carried  with  him  fifteen 
thousand  earnest  followers.  The  menace  was  so 
great  that  in  1844,  when  the  national  Methodist 
conference  met  in  New  York,  although  there  were 
other  things  to  be  done,  the  one  thing  that  all  men 
thought  about  was  the  healing  of  the  schism.  This, 
however,  could  not  be  done  unless  the  Southern 
Methodists,  who  composed  at  least  half  the  church, 
yielded  to  the  demand  that  they  give  up  slavery. 
The  test  turned  on  the  case  of  Bishop  Andrew  of 
Georgia,  whose  wife  owned  slaves.  The  discipline 
of  the  denomination  had  declared  from  the  be 
ginning  that  no  preacher  should  own  slaves. 
Andrew  was  a  bishop  who  must  minister  to  the 
churches  even  in  New  England.  He  must  either 
give  up  his  wife's  slaves  or  give  up  the  work  to 
which  he  had  been  ordained  and  in  which  he  was 
a  master  spirit.  It  was  a  hard  alternative.  The 
Southern  Methodists  chose  to  defend  and  maintain 
slavery  and  to  make  Andrew's  case  their  own; 


106  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

the  Northern  Methodists  took  the  view  of  Orange 
Scott  and  William  Lloyd  Garrison.  Both  parties 
were  friendly  but  in  deadly  earnest.  They  sepa 
rated.  They  could  not  do  otherwise,  for  the 
people  of  the  cotton  States  would  have  banned 
forever  any  preacher  who  attacked  slavery,  and 
the  Methodists  of  New  England,  at  any  rate, 
would  have  refused  to  countenance  a  clergyman 
who  endorsed  slavery.  The  Methodist  Church 
South  was  therefore  organized  in  1846,  with 
Joshua  Soule  of  Ohio  as  its  leading  bishop. 

From  the  date  of  the  separation  to  the  outbreak 
of  the  Civil  War  the  Methodist  Church  increased 
as  it  had  never  increased  before.  The  membership 
doubled  in  fifteen  years.  Preachers  like  McTyeire 
and  Capers  and  McSparran  became  as  well  known 
to  the  lower  South  as  leading  governors  and  con 
gressmen.  McTyeire  published  a  little  handbook1 
which  taught  what  the  true  relations  of  masters 
and  slaves  should  be.  Dr.  William  A.  Smith  of 
Virginia,  who  was  very  influential  in  the  cotton 
States,  argued  in  a  book  which  was  widely  dis 
cussed  that  slavery  was  divinely  established  and 
that  it  was  the  duty  of  all  good  men  to  defend  it. 

1 H.  N.  McTyeire:  Duties  of  Masters  and  Servants  (Premium  Essays 
of  the  Southern  Baptist  Publication  Society,  Charleston,  1851). 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  107 

Preachers  owned  slaves;  planters  guided  the  polity 
of  the  church;  and  the  Bible  became  the  arsenal 
from  which  the  best  pro-slavery  weapons  were 
drawn.  And  as  all  men  had  now  accepted  the  total 
and  absolute  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  the  thrusts  of 
these  weapons  were  not  easy  to  parry. 

What  happened  to  the  Methodists  happened 
likewise  to  the  national  Baptist  organization. 
When  in  1844  the  Baptist  Foreign  Mission  Board, 
sitting  in  Boston,  refused  to  send  a  slaveholder  as 
a  missionary,  Dr.  Basil  Manly,  a  leading  Baptist 
preacher  who  was  also  president  of  the  University 
of  Alabama,  made  protest,  carried  the  matter  to 
the  Baptist  state  convention,  and  procured  the 
adoption  of  resolutions  condemning  the  rule  of  the 
Foreign  Mission  Board  and  refusing  further  co 
operation.  The  next  year  representatives  of  the 
Southern  Baptists  assembled  in  August  and  or 
ganized  the  Southern  Baptist  Convention.  The 
best  and  ablest  preachers  of  the  denomination  were 
present  and  guided  the  deliberations  of  the  as 
sembly.  Manly,  Richard  Fuller,  A.  M.  Poindexter, 
and  the  rest  assumed  the  role  at  once  of  religious 
statesmen.  In  a  short  while  they  published  at 
denominational  expense  prize  essays  on  the  sub 
ject  of  the  relations  of  Christian  masters  to  their 


108  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

slaves.  The  institutions  of  the  South  became  the 
institutions  of  the  church.  Sermons  and  denomi 
national  influences  became  increasingly  pro-slav 
ery.  The  membership  of  the  Baptist  Church 
increased  a  hundred  per  cent  during  the  next 
fifteen  years.  Clergymen  were  entirely  at  one  with 
their  planter  deacons  who,  like  their  Methodist 
friends,  governed  the  polity  of  the  church. 

Although  the  Presbyterians  avoided  a  break  in 
their  national  organization  before  1861,  it  was  not 
because  the  same  influences  were  not  at  work. 
The  clergy  of  the  lower  South  quietly  assumed 
control  of  the  national  assemblies.  Dr.  Thorn- 
well,  who  became  the  real  leader  of  American  Pres 
byterians,  was  president  of  the  University  of  South 
Carolina  for  a  time,  then  president  of  the  Southern 
Presbyterian  Theological  Seminary  at  Columbia, 
and  all  the  while  editor  of  the  Southern  Presby 
terian  Review,  which  was  for  many  years  one  of 
the  most  influential  periodicals  in  the  American 
religious  world.  Thornwell  was  close  to  Calhoun 
before  the  death  of  that  statesman;  he  was  the  idol 
of  young  Presbyterian  preachers  all  over  the  South, 
and  the  envy  of  those  of  other  denominations; 
and  there  have  been  very  few  pulpit  orators  in 
this  country  who  equaled  him.  Next  to  Thornwell 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  109 


stood  another  remarkable  figure,]  Dr.  Benjamin 
M.  Palmer,  like  Thorn  well  a  South  Carolinian,  the 
idolized  pastor  of  the  largest  church  in  New  Or 
leans.  The  attitude  of  most  Southern  preachers 
without  distinction  of  denominations  may  be  seen 
in  the  following  quotation  from  Palmer's  Thanks 
giving  sermon  in  1860: 

The  providential  trust  [of  the  Southern  people]  is  to 
conserve  and  perpetuate  the  institution  of  domestic 
slavery  as  now  existing.  .  .  .  With  this  institution 
assigned  to  our  keeping  we  reply  to  all  who  oppose  us 
that  we  hold  the  trust  from  God  and  we  are  prepared  to 
stand  or  fall  as  God  may  appoint.  .  .  .  [This  attitude 
embraces]  the  circle  of  our  relations,  touches  the  four 
cardinal  points  of  our  duty  to  ourselves,  to  our  slaves, 
to  the  world,  and  to  Almighty  God.  It  establishes  the 
nature  and  solemnity  of  our  present  trust,  to  preserve 
and  transmit  our  existing  system  of  domestic  servitude 
with  the  right,  unchallenged  by  man,  to  go  and  root 
itself  wherever  Providence  and  nature  may  carry  it. 
This  trust  we  will  discharge  in  the  face  of  the  worst 
possible  peril.  .  .  .  Should  the  madness  of  the  hour 
appeal  to  the  arbitration  of  the  sword,  we  will  not  shrink 
even  from  the  baptism  of  fire.  If  modern  crusaders  stand 
in  serried  ranks  upon  some  plain  of  Esdraelon,  there  shall 
we  be  in  defense  of  our  trust.  Not  till  the  last  man  has 
fallen  behind  the  last  rampart,  shall  it  drop  from  our 
hands ;  and  then  only  in  surrender  to  the  God  who  gave  it. x 

1  Thomas  Gary  Johnson :  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Benjamin  Morgan 
Palmer,  Richmond,  Virginia,  1906,  vol.  I,  pp.  210,  213. 


110  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

This  expression  of  one  of  the  ablest  and  purest  of 
Southern  preachers  met  with  wide-spread  if  not 
universal  acceptance.  Such  unity  and  such  com 
plete  religious  organization  as  the  lower  South  now 
presented  gave  every  assurance  of  success  to  the 
program  of  religious  education  which  Thorn  well, 
Manly,  and  leading  Methodists  everywhere  ad 
vocated.  The  Presbyterians  had  the  greater  theo 
logical  schools  and  they  exercised  the  greatest  in 
fluence  upon  the  collegiate  teaching  of  the  South. 
But  the  Baptists  had  important  institutions  in 
North  Carolina,  as  well  as  Furman  University  in 
South  Carolina,  Mercer  University  in  Georgia,  and 
Howard  College  in  Alabama.  They  began  in  re 
markable  fashion  to  build  a  theological  school  at 
Greenville,  South  Carolina,  which  should  offer  as 
full  and  thorough  courses  in  divinity  as  were  to  be 
found  anywhere  else  in  the  country.  They  raised 
a  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  their  initial  endow 
ment  fund  in  1857  and  another  hundred  thousand 
was  subscribed  in  the  next  two  years.  Of  this 
movement  the  leader  was  James  P.  Boyce,  brother 
of  the  radical  secessionist  member  of  Congress,  and 
himself  one  of  the  richest  men  in  the  South.  The 
Methodists  sent  their  sons  to  Randolph-Macon  in 
Virginia  to  learn  wisdom  and  theology  from 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  111 

William  A.  Smith,  an  acknowledged  pro-slavery 
leader.  But  another  school  of  the  prophets  was 
opened  at  Emory,  Georgia,  a  little  while  before 
the  war  began.  Presbyterians,  Methodists,  and 
Baptists  had  finally  come  to  one  opinion  about  the 
higher  education  of  their  clergy ;  they  were  in  direct 
control  of  more  than  half  of  the  colleges  of  their 
section;  and  their  spirit  prevailed  in  all  the  state 
institutions. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  the  tendency  and 
purpose  of  education  in  a  community  led  and 
guided  by  sincere  and  able  religious  teachers  of  the 
mold  of  Palmer  and  Manly.  If  they  sought  to 
give  every  young  clergyman  a  collegiate  and  even 
theological  training,  they  were  not  less  interested 
in  pressing  upon  all  the  necessity  of  higher  educa 
tion  for  the  laity.  The  result  was  that  in  the 
decade  between  1850  and  1860  practically  every 
college  and  university  in  the  South  doubled  its 
attendance.1  The  University  of  Virginia  had 

1  Twice  as  many  young  men  per  thousand  of  the  population  were 
in  colleges  in  the  lower  South  or  in  some  of  the  Eastern  institutions  as 
were  sent  from  similar  groups  in  other  parts  of  the  country.  Eleven 
thousand  students  were  enrolled  in  the  colleges  of  the  cotton  States, 
while  in  Massachusetts,  with  half  as  many  white  people  as  were  found 
in  all  the  cotton  States,  there  were  only  1733  college  students.  Illinois, 
with  a  population  of  1,712,000  or  more  than  half  as  many  white  people 
had  three  thousand  young  men  in  her  colleges.  The  income  of  all  the 


112  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

nearly  a  thousand  students,  young  men  from  every 
cotton  State  with  their  servants  and  horses  and 
hounds,  as  well  as  with  their  Greek  and  Latin 
texts.  At  the  Universities  of  South  Carolina, 
Georgia,  Alabama,  Mississippi,  and  Louisiana 
there  was  not  only  growth  in  numbers  but  improve 
ment  in  the  quality  of  the  students  and  in  the 
character  of  the  courses  offered.  At  the  Univer 
sity  of  South  Carolina  Francis  Lieber  gave  the  best 
work  in  political  science  that  was  found  in  the 
country,  and  at  the  same  time  Joseph  Le  Conte 
was  feeling  his  way  to  a  theory  of  the  origin  of 
species  which  in  1859  made  Charles  Darwin  the 
foremost  of  scientists.  At  the  University  of  New 
Orleans  Joseph  C.  Nott  was  giving  instruction  in 
ethnology  which  found  expression  in  many  scienti 
fic  writings  and  which  applied  the  principles  of  the 
so-called  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest;  nor  was 
the  work  of  J.  D.  B.  De  Bow  as  a  teacher  of  com 
mercial  subjects  behind  the  best  of  his  time.  The 

higher  institutions  of  the  lower  South  in  1860  was  $708,000,  which 
represented  an  increase  of  more  than  a  hundred  per  cent  over  the 
figures  for  1850.  The  six  New  England  States,  with  the  best  public 
school  system  in  the  world  outside  of  Germany  and  with  an  accumu 
lated  wealth  far  in  excess  of  that  of  the  cotton  region,  spent  only 
$368,469  per  year  in  collegiate  education,  and  their  population  of 
3,5235, 000  sent  only  3748  young  men  to  college.  (U.  S.  Census  1860: 
Mortality  and  Miscellaneous  Statistics,  p.  505.) 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  113 

medical  colleges  of  Charleston,  Mobile,  and  New 
Orleans  were  already  preventing  young  Southern 
ers  from  going  to  the  University  of  Pennsylvania 
in  such  numbers  as  formerly. 

The  promise  of  the  lower  South  in  learning  and 
science  was  so  great  that  the  ablest  teachers  of  the 
time  were  not  loath  to  settle  there.  Robert  Dale 
Owen,  one  of  the  foremost  geologists  of  the  North, 
was  sorely  disappointed  when  he  failed  to  obtain  a 
chair  in  the  University  of  Alabama  in  1847.  And 
the  elder  Agassiz  hardly  knew  whether  to  accept  a 
position  at  Harvard  or  to  remain  a  professor  in  the 
Medical  College  of  Charleston,  where  he  did  some 
of  his  greatest  work.  Audubon  did  the  better  part 
of  his  famous  Birds  of  America  in  the  neighborhood 
of  New  Orleans,  while  his  next  great  book,  Quad 
rupeds  of  America,  was  in  large  measure  the  result 
of  work  he  did  with  John  Bachman  of  Charleston. 
Joseph  Le  Conte  tells  of  a  conversation  he  had  with 
Langdon  Cheves  in  the  summer  of  1858  in  which 
the  latter  outlined  the  theory  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest  as  a  principle  that  scientific  men  ought  to 
work  out. 

Even  if  in  some  respects  the  standards  of  South 
ern  colleges  in  1860  can  be  criticized,  it  remains 
true  that  they  had  made  greater  progress  than 


114  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

similar  institutions  in  other  parts  of  the  country. 
Gentlemen  had  become  conscious  of  their  social 
and  political  responsibilities.  They  were  the  fa 
vored  class ;  they  must  govern,  and  they  prepared 
to  do  so  by  educating  their  sons  as  they  had  not 
been  accustomed  to  do  before  the  new  Southern 
social  philosophy  was  adopted  or  before  the  issue 
between  North  and  South  was  so  clearly  and 
sharply  formulated. 

Nor  was  the  improvement  of  the  common  schools 
less  significant.  The  greatest  social  theorists  of 
the  South,  Harper  and  his  followers,  believed  and 
taught  that  every  white  man  should  have  an  op 
portunity  of  higher  education  and  that  talent 
wherever  found  should  be  subsidized  by  the  State. 
In  response  to  this  teaching  the  reforms  of  Horace 
Mann  in  New  England  and  of  Thaddeus  Stevens 
in  Pennsylvania  were  being  applied  by  William 
H.  Ruffner  in  Virginia,  which  always  influenced 
the  lower  South;  by  Calvin  S.  Wiley  in  North 
Carolina;  and  by  the  famous  William  L.  Yancey 
and  President  Manly  of  the  State  University  in 
Alabama.  In  South  Carolina  and  in  Mississippi 
the  same  spirit  was  at  work,  one  of  the  chief 
reformers  being  the  redoubtable  John  H.  Thorn- 
well,  whose  writings  en  the  subject  of  popular 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  115 

education  are  not  the  least  creditable  of  his  nu 
merous  activities.1 

In  the  matter  of  illiteracy  the  planter  civiliza 
tion  was  in  worse  plight  than  any  other  section. 
In  a  population  of  2,500,000  white  people  there 
were  175,000  illiterates,  somewhat  more  than  were 
found  in  States  like  Indiana  and  Illinois,  although 
the  difference  is  so  small  that  one  would  not  do  well 
to  insist  upon  the  comparison.  In  the  lower  South 
distances  were  so  great  and  population  so  sparse 
that  the  masses  could  not  be  easily  reached  by 
education.  The  schools  were  of  recent  origin,  and 
books  and  newspapers  went  mainly  to  the  planta 
tion  houses  along  the  main  currents  of  intercourse, 
the  rivers,  railroads,  and  greater  highways. 

But  if  illiteracy  had  not  been  overcome  —  and 
under  post-bellum  conditions  it  has  taken  half  a 
century  to  make  much  progress  —  there  was  little 

1  Although  the  States  were  not  so  liberal  in  their  grants  to  lower 
schools  as  to  colleges  and  universities,  yet  there  were  425,600  children 
in  the  schools  of  the  cotton  States  in  I860.  This  showed  that  one 
child  in  every  seven  of  the  white  population  in  the  lower  South  was  in 
school,  at  least  for  a  short  term.  In  the  remainder  of  the  country  the 
ratio  was  one  to  five  or  five  and  a  half.  In  the  cotton  States  $2,432,000 
was  expended  each  year  upon  the  common  schools  and  $1,383,000  in 
the  maintenance  of  academies  and  private  schools.  Comparison  with 
Eastern  conditions  or  with  those  of  the  Northwest  shows  once  again 
that  the  planters  were  not  far  behind  in  actual  performance  and  that 
they  were  in  the  lead  in  the  ratio  of  progress. 


116  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

crime  and  lunacy.  In  many  counties  jails  stood 
open;  and  in  all  the  counties  and  towns  the  reports 
showed  an  astonishingly  small  percentage  of  delin 
quents.  The  open  spaces  of  the  country  gave  men 
free  room.  The  criminally  disposed  were  not  in  so 
large  a  proportion  as  in  other  parts  of  the  country; 
nor  did  many  break  down  under  the  conditions  of 
life  and  find  their  way  into  the  hospitals  for  the 
insane.  The  planters  claimed  much  credit  for  this 
favorable  showing,  though  in  truth  it  was  rather 
their  outdoor  life  than  any  social  arrangements 
that  reduced  the  numbers  of  these  unfortunate 
classes. 

Did  no  kindly  man  rise  to  ask  something  for  the 
unfortunate  slave?  The  effect  of  the  separation  of 
the  Methodist  and  Baptist  churches  in  1844  and 
1845  stirred  the  preachers  to  give  the  slaves  a  part 
of  the  Gospel  at  least.  From  1845  to  the  outbreak 
of  the  war,  men  like  Bishop  Weightman  of  South 
Carolina  devoted  their  best  efforts  to  lifting  the 
negro  from  his  slough  of  religious  ignorance  and 
superstition.  Churches  were  built  on  the  larger 
plantations;  more  room  was  prepared  in  the  older 
church  buildings  for  the  accommodation  of  negro 
congregations;  and  every  church  had  its  gallery 
for  the  slaves.  But  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the 


RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION  117 

preachers  to  induce  in  them  a  quiet  and  reverential 
demeanor,  the  black  worshipers  would  cry  aloud 
and  sometimes  chant  mournful  songs  during  the 
services. 

Sermons  for  negroes  were  not  preached  from  such 
texts  as  "The  truth  shall  make  you  free, "  but  from 
such  more  appropriate  themes  as  "Servants,  be 
obedient  to  them  that  are  your  masters"  and  "In 
the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread,  till  thou 
return  unto  the  ground."  Negroes  were  not  al 
lowed  to  hold  religious  meetings  without  the  pres 
ence  of  some  white  man.  They  might  be  taught 
to  read  the  Bible,  the  Prayer  Book,  and  the  hym 
nals  of  Methodists  and  Baptists,  but  more  learn 
ing  was  not  thought  good  for  them.  The  reason 
for  this  point  of  view  requires  no  explanation 
here.  If  the  negro  did  not  relish  having  to  wor 
ship  frequently  in  the  white  man's  church,  he 
at  least  did  realize  that  his  master  was  becoming 
more  thoughtful  of  his  human  interests. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    PLANTER    IN    POLITICS 

THE  political  basis  of  the  plantation  system  was 
the  county  court,  and  the  county  court  of  the 
South  came  from  the  banks  of  the  James  and 
the  York  rivers.  In  old  Virginia  a  county  court 
was  composed  of  a  group  of  justices  of  the  peace 
meeting  once  a  month  to  try  petty  cases  of  law. 
These  justices  were  the  grandees  of  their  respec 
tive  neighborhoods.  They  were  vestrymen  in 
the  established  church,  owners  of  plantations,  and 
lords  of  manors.  Their  wives  were  the  ladies  of 
the  land  and  their  daughters  set  the  hearts  of  young 
blades  aflame  when  they  appeared  in  church. 
They  were  men  of  good  common  sense,  familiar 
with  the  codes  of  Virginia  and  to  a  less  degree 
acquainted  with  the  precedents  of  English  law 
courts.  Everybody  looked  up  to  them;  and 
they  made  themselves  responsible  in  considerable 
measure  for  the  good  behavior  of  the  countryside. 

118 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS 

What  they  thought  was  right  was  likely  to  become 
law. 

Now  when  these  bewigged  and  bepowdered 
gentlemen  took  their  seats  on  the  county  bench, 
the  wheels  of  justice  in  the  old  commonwealth  of 
Virginia  began  to  revolve.  But  aside  from  the 
ordinary  business  of  courts,  they  sat  in  adminis 
trative  sessions  to  appoint  sheriffs  and  road  over 
seers  and  to  order  the  building  of  bridges  and 
schoolhouses.  At  informal  meetings  they  deter 
mined  which  of  their  number  ought  to  stand  for 
election  to  the  next  assembly,  passed  upon  the 
conduct  of  returning  members  of  Congress,  and  as 
time  went  on  learned  to  denounce  the  conduct  of 
rascally  Yankees.  The  government  of  Virginia 
during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
rested  securely  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  county 
justices  of  the  peace. 

In  fact,  these  justices  inherited  their  social  posi 
tion  from  honorable  English  ancestors  who  had 
sworn  by  the  name  of  the  King;  or,  if  they  were 
self-made  men,  they  were  duly  recognized  by  the 
planter  gentry  as  worthy  of  a  place  among  them. 
The  county  bench  was  the  source  of  many  good 
things.  Vacancies  in  the  court  were  filled  by  the 
surviving  judges;  and  all  was  done  with  such 


120  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

regard  to  precedent  and  after  such  deliberation 
that  county  courts  seldom  ran  amuck.  Through  all 
the  storms  of  the  Revolution  and  the  trials  of  the 
Jeffersonian  period,  these  local  organizations  func 
tioned  smoothly  and  never  for  a  moment  lost  their 
hold  either  upon  the  public  or  upon  the  course  of 
events. 

This  was  the  model  upon  which  South  Carolina 
remade  her  judicial  system  when  at  the  end  of  the 
Revolution  she  took  into  political  partnership  her 
great  and  growing  up-country.  The  county  courts 
of  Georgia,  Alabama,  and  Mississippi  were  but 
images  of  Virginia  institutions  planted  upon  a 
distant  soil.  Florida  and  Louisiana  readjusted 
their  French  and  Spanish  procedure  to  fit  the 
general  model,  though  retaining  the  Napoleonic 
code.  Texas  took  her  system  from  Missouri, 
which  in  turn  had  taken  hers  from  Virginia. 

The  justice  of  the  peace  was  an  institution  of  the 
lower  South  quite  as  much  as  of  Virginia  herself. 
To  know  this  gentleman  of  the  old  school,  this 
humane  and  good-natured  autocrat,  mildly  proud 
of  himself  and  keenly  resentful  of  any  criticism  of 
his  Latin  or  of  his  law,  is  to  know  the  political  life 
of  the  South  as  well  as  of  the  cotton  kingdom, 
because  every  justice  of  the  peace,  save  on  the 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS 

distant  frontier,  was  a  slaveholder  or  likely  soon 
to  become  such,  a  conservative  in  politics  and  re 
ligion,  and  a  member  or  prospective  member  of  the 
Legislature. 

The  political  power  of  the  cotton  kingdom  there 
fore  was  firmly  lodged  in  the  hands  of  successful 
business  men.  There  was  never  in  America  a  more 
perfect  oligarchy  of  business  men  than  that  which 
ruled  in  the  time  of  Jefferson  Davis  and  Alexander 
Stephens.  Laws  were  made  by  the  owners  of 
plantations;  the  higher  courts  were  established 
by  their  decrees;  governors  of  States  were  of  their 
choosing;  and  members  of  Congress  were  selected 
and  maintained  in  office  in  accordance  with  their 
wishes.  And,  as  we  have  already  seen,  they  were 
the  ruling  members  of  all  the  churches.  Truly 
nothing  of  importance  could  happen  in  the  lower 
South  without  their  consent.  This  fact  gave  to 
the  South  its  unity  of  political  purpose  and  that 
moderation  of  social  change  which  men  of  wealth 
always  prefer.  Security  of  property,  loyalty  to 
church,  and  safety  in  education  were  the  guaran 
tees  of  the  system. 

Still,  there  were  party  differences.  The  older 
Federalist  groups  along  the  coast  of  Carolina  and 
Georgia  had  slowly  merged  into  the  Jeffersonian 


THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

party  after  it  had  become  "safe  and  sane/'  Jack 
son  disrupted  that  party  and  brought  into  power  a 
mass  of  Western  farmers  and  land-hungry  tenants. 
At  once  the  Federalist  areas  and  the  big  black 
counties  along  all  the  rivers  in  the  lower  South 
formed  a  party  of  opposition.  Though  Henry  Clay 
became  the  sponsor  of  this  party,  national  im 
potence  was  its  role,  for  no  great  aggressive  party 
is  likely  to  grow  out  of  conservative  beginnings. 
The  Jackson  "rough  necks"  became  the  sober 
Democrats  of  Folk's  Administration  and  conserva 
tive  reactionaries  in  the  Administrations  of  Pierce 
and  Buchanan.  The  larger  planters  and  justices 
of  the  older  counties  everywhere  tended  to  follow 
Clay,  while  the  smaller  planters,  the  rising  business 
men,  liked  the  rougher  Jackson  way.  Besides, 
Jackson  could  carry  the  West,  and  the  votes  of  the 
West  were  necessary  to  any  aggressive  national 
policy.  But  these  differences  were  the  differences 
of  older  and  younger  groups,  not  the  differences  of 
social  irreconcilables.  Consequently,  though  each 
party  twitted  the  other  on  occasion  with  being 
disloyal  to  slavery,  in  any  great  crisis  they  were 
almost  certain  to  unite,  for,  whatever  happened, 
the  planters  felt  that  they  must  control  the  cotton 
kingdom. 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  123 

If  the  planters  controlled  the  lower  South,  they 
were  likely  to  control  the  border  States ;  and  if  they 
held  these  two  sections  together  in  national  legisla 
tion,  they  were  more  than  likely  to  guide  the  policy 
of  the  United  States  as  a  whole,  for  a  compact 
minority  with  great  wealth  behind  it  and  with 
leisure  to  devote  to  public  affairs  is  almost  certain 
to  govern  any  country.  That  is,  a  population  of 
two  and  a  half  millions  in  the  lower  South,  with 
only  a  tenth  of  them  directly  connected  with  slav 
ery,  would  guide  a  nation  of  twenty  millions,  nine- 
tenths  of  whom  were  either  outspoken  or  silent 
opponents  of  slavery  and  all  it  connoted. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  leaders  of  the 
lower  South  undertook  about  1840  to  widen  the 
area  of  slavery,  that  is,  expand  the  cotton  kingdom. 
John  C.  Calhoun,  who  controlled  a  large  following 
in  both  political  parties  in  the  eastern  end  of  the 
lower  South,  was  an  ardent  advocate  of  expansion. 
The  young  Senator  from  Mississippi,  Robert 
Walker,  a  leader  of  the  Jackson  wing  of  the  planters 
on  the  Mississippi  and  a  most  adroit  politician, 
was  even  more  ardently  in  favor  of  annexations. 
After  some  years  of  maneuvering  the  two  men  ef 
fected  a  working  alliance  of  the  cotton  men  of  the 
South  and  the  farmers  of  the  West;  and  in  the 


124  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Democratic  convention  of  1844  they  committed  the 
Democratic  party  of  the  country  to  their  ambitious 
policy.  They  defeated  Henry  Clay  at  the  time 
when  he  had  set  his  heart  on  the  presidency  and 
elected  James  K.  Polk,  who  completed  the  annexa 
tion  of  Texas,  declared  war  on  Mexico,  and  took 
possession  of  New  Mexico,  California,  and  Oregon, 
in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  John  Quincy  Adams, 
Daniel  Webster,  Martin  Van  Buren,  and  Clay 
himself. 

The  success  of  the  movement  gave  the  planters 
such  confidence  in  themselves  and  such  prestige 
before  the  country  that  they  felt  themselves  in 
vincible.  Southern  and  Western  volunteers  offered 
themselves  with  such  enthusiasm  and  fought  over 
the  Mexican  hills  and  mountains  with  such  bril 
liancy  that  Southern  members  of  Congress  declared 
that  the  whole  North  American  continent  should 
be  seized  and  held.  Western  Democrats  like  Sena 
tor  Douglas  of  Illinois  shared  this  vision  of  a  con> 
tinental  republic.  If  Jefferson  Davis,  just  enter 
ing  political  life  from  the  Southwest,  was  set  upon 
making  an  American  lake  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
Lewis  Cass,  speaking  for  the  Northwest,  was 
equally  covetous  of  Canada. 

The  imposing  position  of  the  planters  in  the 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  125 

national  life  stirred  the  aged  Adams  to  propose  the 
secession  of  the  Northern  States  and  caused  New 
England  men  of  more  sober  cast  of  mind  to  con 
template  that  last  desperate  move  of  the  defeated 
party.  But  in  the  very  hour  of  victory  Polk  and 
his  Southern  supporters  denied  to  the  Northwest 
the  improvements  which  they  asked  for  their  rivers 
and  harbors  and  at  the  same  time  refused  some  of 
their  leaders  appointments  which  were  thought  to 
be  their  due.  In  August,  1846,  Jacob  Brinkerhoff 
of  Ohio  and  David  Wilmot  of  western  Pennsyl 
vania  started  in  the  Democratic  ranks  a  revolt  of 
which  the  defeated  and  sore  Van  Buren  made 
utmost  use.  Anti-slavery  men  balked  at  the  ac 
quisition  of  territory  from  Mexico  unless  it  should 
first  be  declared  free  soil;  and  planter  interests 
suffered  many  setbacks  in  the  House  of  Represen* 
tatives. 

In  the  succeeding  presidential  election  Van 
Buren  broke  from  the  ranks  of  his  party,  set  himself 
up  as  an  anti-slavery  candidate  for  the  presidency, 
and  defeated  Cass,  the  candidate  of  the  Democratic 
party.  As  for  the  Whig  party,  it  had  only  to  prof 
it  by  these  dissensions.  It  nominated  and  elected 
General  Zachary  Taylor,  who,  though  himself  a 
Southerner,  was  not  committed  to  the  designs  of  the 


126  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

planters.  Although  the  party  convention  had  not 
framed  a  platform,  many  Whig  leaders  throughout 
the  campaign  had  declared  that  the  area  of  slavery 
must  not  be  extended  through  the  aid  or  conniv 
ance  of  the  national  legislature.  The  Taylor  Ad 
ministration  therefore  was  not  disposed  to  allow 
the  planters  to  reap  the  fruits  of  their  success. 

Balked  in  their  plans,  the  spokesmen  of  Missis 
sippi,  duly  prompted  by  Calhoun,  gathered  in  a 
mass  meeting  at  Jackson,  their  state  capital,  early 
in  December,  1849.  They  called  upon  the  people 
of  Mississippi  and  of  the  other  planter  States  to 
arouse  themselves  and  defend  their  property  and 
their  institutions.  Later  the  Legislature  of  Missis 
sippi  elected  delegates  to  a  Southern  convention 
to  be  held  at  Nashville,  Tennessee,  in  June,  1850. 
All  the  other  Southern  States  responded  with  more 
or  less  enthusiasm.  If  Congress  refused  to  allow 
slavery  to  be  carried  into  California  or  New  Mexico, 
then  —  according  to  the  threat  often  heard  —  the 
cotton  States  would  secede. 

Scenting  the  danger  beforehand,  Clay  returned 
once  again  to  the  Senate.  He  alone  of  the  Whig 
nationalists  had  an  important  following  among  the 
planters  of  the  lower  South.  Half  the  delegates  to 
the  Nashville  convention  proved  to  be  his  followers; 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  127 

and  in  States  like  Mississippi  and  Louisiana  there 
were  Unionist  Democrats  who  were  not  ready  to 
break  up  the  country  merely  if  slavery  were  refused 
protection  in  California.  Realizing  his  strength, 
Clay  arrived  betimes  at  the  capital  and  set  his 
friends  to  work.  His  reasonableness,  his  refusal 
to  have  relations  with  the  President,  his  dislike  of 
Seward,  and  his  hatred  of  Weed,  carried  Demo 
crats  and  slave-owners  like  Thomas  Ritchie,  the 
famous  editor,  and  Henry  S.  Foote,  an  ally  of  Cal- 
houn,  into  his  party.  The  compromise  measures 
of  1850  under  the  masterful  management  of  Clay 
melted  away  the  stern  resolution  of  the  Nashville 
convention  before  it  gathered.1  The  secession 
movement  proved  abortive.  The  planters  ac 
quiesced  in  the  measures  of  Congress,  and  Calhoun 
died,  broken-hearted  at  the  failure  of  his  program. 
At  this  juncture  the  Whigs  played  into  the  hands 
of  their  opponents.  Under  the  guidance  of  Seward, 
the  WThig  party  refused  to  accept  whole-heartedly 
the  work  of  Clay,  the  compromise  which  had  been 
forced  upon  them,  and  nominated  for  President  in 
1852  a  neutral  candidate,  General  Winfield  Scott, 


1  For  an  account  of  these  compromise  measures  of  1850,  see  Chap 
ter  VII  of  The  Anti-Slavery  Crusade  by  Jesse  Macy  (in  The  Chronicles 
of  America). 


128  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

on  a  platform  of  doubt.  Seizing  the  oppor 
tunity  with  renewed  hope,  the  planters  "hand- 
picked"  Franklin  Pierce,  accepted  the  work  of 
Clay  without  qualification,  and  won  the  electoral 
vote  of  every  State  but  four  in  the  following 
November.  The  planters  were  now  in  a  position 
to  regain  every  point  which  they  had  lost  in  the 
compromise. 

President  Pierce  sent  Christopher  Gadsden, 
president  of  a  South  Carolina  railroad,  to  Mexico 
to  purchase  another  strip  of  Mexican  territory  on 
which  a  great  southern  Pacific  railroad  was  to  be 
built.  And  he  sent  Pierre  Soule,  a  most  ardent 
Louisiana  imperialist,  to  Spain  to  purchase  Cuba 
at  any  cost.  There  was  reason  to  believe  he  would 
come  back  successful.  At  any  rate  every  American 
diplomat  in  Europe  was  apparently  counseled  to 
lend  assistance.  If  Soule  was  successful,  two  other 
slave  States  would  be  promptly  admitted.  The 
outlook  was  so  bright  that  the  Secretary  of  State, 
William  L.  Marcy,  became  a  candidate  for  the 
Democratic  nomination  of  1856  on  a  platform  of 
Southern  expansion. 

The  planters  renewed  their  hopes,  and  well  they 
might.  A  majority  of  the  House  of  Representa 
tives  was  Democratic;  the  Senate  was  overwhelm- 


l 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS 

ingly  Democratic;  the  President  and  Cabinet  were 
in  full  sympathy  with  the  Southern  Democratic 
leaders;  and  seven  of  the  nine  justices  of  the 
Supreme  Court  were  either  owners  of  plantations 
or  pro-slavery  in  attitude.  The  chairmen  of  all 
the  great  committees  of  Congress  were  owners  of 
slaves  and  ready  to  initiate  legislation  in  the  in 
terest  of  the  lower  South.  Why  should  not  the 
planters,  experts  in  government,  direct  the  policy 
of  the  United  States? 

Facts  indicated  that  in  the  cotton  country  the 
planters  did  set  themselves  this  task.  Their  eco 
nomic  interests  urged  them  on;  their  social  phi 
losophy  and  their  religion  gave  them  conscious 
unity  of  purpose.  Political  unity,  the  condition  of 
immediate  success,  was  within  sight.  From  the 
time  when,  in  1852,  Alexander  Stephens  and  Robert 
Toombs  deserted  the  Whig  ranks  for  those  of  the 
Democratic  party,  the  political  solidarity  of  the 
planters  was  more  definitely  assured  than  it  had 
ever  been  under  the  bipartizan  regime.  Upon  the 
death  of  Clay  most  of  the  followers  of  that  brilliant 
politician  prepared  to  join  the  ranks  of  the  De 
mocracy.  With  the  exception  of  some  sporadic  re 
sistance  from  Native  Americans,  or  Know-Noth- 
ings,  in  1854-56,  the  party  of  Davis  and  Slidell  and 


130  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Toombs  and  Stephens  governed  the  South,  and 
the  whole  country  as  well,  until  1860.  Only  a  few 
lonely  spirits  such  as  Andrew  Johnson  and  John 
Bell,  both  of  Tennessee,  and  the  famous  Sam 
Houston  of  Texas,  distinguished  themselves  in 
Congress  by  voting  against  the  dominant  South 
erners. 

But  this  unity  depended  upon  an  avowed 
Unionist  policy,  not  upon  the  dis-Union  program 
as  put  forward  at  Nashville  in  1850.  Not  even 
Davis  himself  desired  separate  Southern  action 
after  1852.  The  planter  politicians  now  sought 
allies  in  the  East  and  the  Northwest.  Asa  Bigler, 
the  boss  of  Pennsylvania,  Tammany  Hall  and 
John  A.  Dix  of  New  York,  Toucy  of  Connecticut, 
and  Caleb  Cushing  of  Massachusetts  —  these  were 
already  enlisted,  while  the  aged  Van  Buren  and 
his  son,  "Prince"  John,  made  haste  to  return  to 
their  former  allegiance  now  that  Cass  had  been 
duly  punished.  From  the  Northwest,  Senators 
Allen  of  Ohio,  Cass  of  Michigan,  Jesse  Bright  of 
Indiana,  Douglas  of  Illinois,  and  Dodge  of  Iowa 
answered  the  call  of  the  lower  South.  Scores  of 
lesser  lights  followed  in  the  orbit  of  these  larger 
luminaries.  Nothing  succeeds  like  success;  and 
at  that  time  the  planters  were  unquestionably 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  131 

successful  in  adding  to  their  political  following 
both  in  Washington  and  in  their  state  capitals. 

Still,  the  guarantee  of  a  long  lease  of  power  at  the 
national  capital  required  a  complete  unity  of  pur 
pose  at  home.  And  that  solidarity  was  made  the 
objective  of  a  campaign  of  publicity  which  became 
intensive  in  1853  and  which  closed  only  with  the 
echoes  of  the  big  guns  at  Charleston  in  1861 .  Lead 
ing  governors,  great  planters,  merchants,  and  edi 
tors  assembled  from  year  to  year  in  commercial 
conventions  at  Charleston,  Savannah,  Montgom 
ery,  and  Vicksburg  to  deliberate  upon  the  inter 
ests  and  ideals  of  the  lower  South  and  of  the  border 
States  as  well.  The  conservation  of  cotton  soils, 
the  efficiency  of  labor  units,  the  growing  impor 
tance  of  manufactures  in  the  South,  the  importa 
tion  of  slaves  from  Africa,  free  schools  for  all 
whites,  religious  instruction  for  the  negroes,  rail 
roads  to  the  Pacific,  and  steamship  lines  to  Europe 
were  the  staple  subjects  of  discussion. 

Of  the  items  in  the  program  two  require  more 
particular  attention  here.  The  more  important 
one  was  the  building  of  a  railroad  from  some  point 
on  the  lower  Mississippi  to  San  Francisco.  If  this 
road  were  built  at  national  expense  and  by  liberal 
land  grants,  as  Davis  proposed,  a  tier  of  slave  States 


132  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

would  inevitably  be  set  up  all  along  the  line,  and 
California  itself  would  be  drawn  into  the  lower 
Southern  group.  If  the  planter  life  and  ideal  were 
thus  spread  across  the  continent,  the  commercial 
interests  of  the  Middle  West  and  even  of  the 
Missouri  valley  must  seek  outlets  through  South 
ern  ports.  For  the  new  railroads  which  would  be 
built  through  wide  regions  of  prairie  and  forest 
would  thus  open  new  areas  to  development.  The 
Mobile  and  Ohio,  the  Louisville  and  Nashville, 
and  the  Illinois  Central  systems  were  already  under 
way.  If  Memphis  and  New  Orleans  became  ter 
minals  of  the  proposed  Pacific  system,  then  they, 
with  Vicksburg  and  St.  Louis,  would  become  the 
cities  of  the  future. 

When  Gadsden  returned  from  Mexico  with  the 
assurance  that  enough  territory  could  be  acquired 
to  make  a  Southern  Pacific  route  feasible,  the 
whole  influence  of  the  Administration  directed  by 
the  able  Secretary  of  War  was  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  undertaking.  But  Douglas  foresaw  the 
consequences  of  the  Davis  plan  and  hastened  to 
defeat  it  by  promoting  a  Central  Pacific  Railroad 
with  Chicago  as  its  eastern  terminus.  His  Kansas- 
Nebraska  bill  and  the  consequent  anti-slavery  agi 
tation  of  1854  defeated  the  immediate  ambitions 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  133 

of  the  cotton-planters;  and  from  that  date  to  his 
death  the  lower  South  hated  and  distrusted  and 
feared  Douglas.1 

Of  equal  importance  to  the  lower  South  was  the 
problem  of  population  and  immigration.  Southern 
conventions  discussed  the  matter  long  and  ably. 
The  annual  increase  of  population  in  the  North 
due  to  immigration  from  Europe  was  nearly  half  a 
million.  If  this  increase  continued,  no  amount  of 
solidarity  and  cooperation  of  leaders  in  the  cotton 
kingdom  could  save  that  section  from  relative 
decline.  At  the  same  time,  to  invite  a  large  inflow 
of  Germans,  Irish,  and  English  laborers  would 
endanger  the  planter  control.  Nor  was  it  likely 
that  foreign  workers  would  readily  settle  in  the 
South.  There  was  little  free  land  left,  and  slaves 
were  sold  at  prices  that  made  the  ambition  of  poor 
men  to  become  planters  seem  fantastic.  Far- 
seeing  planters,  as  we  have  noted,  urged  the  diver 
sion  of  capital  to  manufacturing  so  as  to  attract 
foreign  labor  and  to  create  home  markets  for 
Southern  products.  But  this  industrial  transition 
could  not  be  made  in  a  day. 

1  The  history  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  is  recounted,  with  a 
difference  of  emphasis,  in  Chapter  X  of  The  Anti-Slavery  Crusade  and 
in  Chapter  II  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and  the  Union  (in  The  Chronicles  of 
America}. 


134  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

South  Carolinians  took  up  the  problem  of  rela 
tive  decline  in  population  as  early  as  1855  and  rec 
ommended  the  repeal  of  the  laws  of  1807  and  1819 
which  forbade  the  foreign  slave  trade.  It  was  as 
sumed  that  the  laboring  population  of  the  lower 
South  was  to  consist  of  negro  slaves  and  must  be 
increased  by  new  importations  from  Africa.  The 
reopening  of  the  slave-trade,  to  be  sure,  would  once 
have  caused  protest  and  apprehension.  But  the 
teachings  of  Dew  and  Harper,  the  attitude  of  the 
churches,  and  the  attacks  of  the  abolitionists,  had 
dissipated  all  doubts  and  fears.  The  prosperity  of 
the  cotton  States  now  required  large  numbers  of 
slaves  from  Africa.  Upon  this  black  and  stolid 
human  foundation  would  the  Carolinians  build 
and  expand  their  empire,  which  was  to  embrace 
Cuba,  eastern  Mexico,  and  California. 

In  the  Southern  convention  of  1858  William  L. 
Yancey  appeared  as  the  champion  of  the  new 
policy.  As  he  and  his  friends  conceived  it,  the 
importation  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  blacks 
from  Africa  would  not  only  offset  Northern  impor 
tations  of  labor  from  Europe,  but,  by  reducing  the 
price  of  slaves  and  increasing  the  profits  of  masters, 
it  would  give  poor  men  a  better  chance  to  share 
in  the  "blessings"  of  slavery  and  thus  widen  the 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  135 

foundations  of  Southern  influence,  and  it  would 
increase  the  total  population  and  thus  increase 
the  representation  of  the  planters  in  Congress. 
From  every  point  of  view  this  importation  of 
slaves  would  add  new  advantages  to  those  already 
possessed  by  the  lower  South.  The  great  obstacle 
would  be  the  opposition  on  the  part  of  the  North 
to  the  repeal  of  the  laws  against  the  foreign  slave- 
trade.  A  minor  obstacle  was  the  reluctance  of 
border  States  like  Virginia  to  run  the  risk  of  losing 
their  profits  from  the  domestic  slave-trade.  If 
their  slaves  were  not  sold  in  the  lower  South,  they 
would  multiply  on  worn-out  lands  and  become 
such  a  burden  that  emancipation  might  become 
necessary.  But  this  objection  was  not  considered 
to  be  a  real  one.  Virginians  would  find  in  a  stable 
and  masterful  cotton  kingdom  that  which  would 
counterbalance  this  disadvantage. 

The  objections  which  Congress  would  interpose 
were  evaded  by  recommending  to  the  States  that  / 
they  enact  apprenticeship  laws  somewhat  like 
those  of  colonial  times  and  not  unlike  those  of 
Illinois  and  Indiana  in  1858.  Under  such  laws 
black  apprentices  could  be  imported  in  large  num 
bers  and  the  Federal  courts  could  not  intervene. 
For  nearly  fifty  years  Southern  and  Northern 


136  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

slave-traders  had  brought  blacks  from  Africa  and 
had  sold  sometimes  as  many  as  ten  thousand  a 
year,  and  yet  no  one  had  ever  been  effectively 
punished.  Moreover,  if  slavery  was  a  blessing — • 
as  men  now  believed  it  to  be  —  what  wrong  could 
there  be  in  selling  slaves? 

Before  the  debate  was  closed  at  the  next  South 
ern  convention,  Louisiana,  Alabama,  and  Georgia 
enacted  laws  under  which  numbers  of  negro  appren 
tices  from  Africa  found  their  way  to  the  plantations. 
If  these  experiments  proved  successful,  larger  num 
bers  would  be  imported.  Of  course  difficulties 
might  arise  in  the  transfer  of  such  apprentices,  but 
since  the  benighted  African  would  know  nothing 
of  the  laws  or  of  the  distinctions  between  appren 
tices  and  slaves,  there  would  be  little  difficulty  in 
disposing  of  all  as  slaves.  Free  blacks  could  live 
in  the  lower  South  only  by  common  consent,  for 
the  laws  forbidding  their  presence  were  drastic, 
and  they  could  easily  be  reduced  to  the  same 
status  as  all  other  negroes. 

Closely  akin  to  this  evasion  of  Federal  law  was 
the  persistent  Southern  filibustering  against  Cuba 
and  Central  America.  Soule  returned  from  Spain 
unsuccessful,  and  the  brutal  statement  of  the 
American  attitude  toward  Cuba  in  the  famous 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  137 

Ostend  manifesto  brought  reproach  to  President 
Pierce  and  his  advisers.  But  even  before  this  set 
back  Narciso  Lopez  had  led  two  or  three  expedi 
tions  against  the  coveted  island.  On  one  occasion 
as  many  as  six  hundred  Americans  had  been  landed 
and  led  against  the  Spanish  authorities.  A  gover 
nor  of  Mississippi  lent  assistance  in  1851  so  openly 
that  he  was  cited  to  appear  before  a  grand  jury  in 
New  Orleans;  and  a  nephew  of  Senator  John  J. 
Crittenden  was  killed  in  Cuba  in  the  same  year 
fighting  under  the  banner  of  Lopez.  Public  men 
and  newspapers  in  every  Southern  city  commended 
these  movements.  The  greatest  of  all  these  free 
lance  war-makers  was  \Villiam  Walker  of  Tennes 
see,  who  attacked  first  Mexico  and  then  Nicara 
gua,  proclaiming  himself  a  deliverer  wherever  he 
went.  Twice  he  was  arrested  by  the  authorities 
of  the  United  States,  but  each  time  Southern  Sena 
tors  defended  him  and  his  doings. 

These  incursions  into  Cuba  were  plainly  intended 
to  carry  planter  institutions  to  less  fortunate 
countries,  and  the  best  thought  of  the  South  ap 
proved  the  purpose.  Why  should  there  not  be  an 
expanding  cotton,  rice,  and  sugar  kingdom  just 
as  there  was  a  growing  industrial  empire  in  the 
East  and  North? 


138  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

The  presidential  election  of  1856  was  of  primary 
importance.  The  mistakes  of  Pierce  had  made 
Douglas  the  foremost  candidate  of  the  Democrats, 
and  the  rising  tide  of  opposition  led  by  Seward  gave 
evidence  that  the  planters  might  soon  be  defeated 
in  national  politics  and  reduced  to  the  necessity  of 
secession  if  they  intended  to  pursue  their  program 
unhindered.  Yancey  and  Slidell  and  the  other  able 
leaders  of  the  lower  South  attended  the  Demo 
cratic  convention  which  met  at  Cincinnati  in  June, 
1856.  By  careful  management  they  prevented 
Douglas,  their  chief  aversion,  from  winning  the 
nomination,  though  his  popularity  at  the  North 
was  very  great,  and  they  finally  set  up  as  their 
candidate  James  Buchanan,  who  had  never 
"spoken  ill  of  the  South."  This  victory  had  not 
been  won,  however,  without  yielding  to  Douglas 
and  the  West  the  privilege  of  writing  the  party 
platform.  It  was  but  a  restatement  of  the  idea 
that  the  settlers  in  any  new  Territory  should 
determine  for  themselves  whether  they  would  have 
slavery  or  not.  It  was  the  application  to  Terri 
tories  of  the  principle  of  popular  sovereignty  which 
both  then  and  later  was  acceptable  to  the  up- 
country  element  in  the  South.  Only  the  great 
planter  group  understood  and  opposed  it,  and 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  139 

above  all  opposed  Douglas,  who  was  always  talking 
about  the  plain  people  and  local  self-government. 

Few  campaigns  in  American  history  have  ever 
been  more  hotly  contested  than  that  of  1856. 
There  was  frequent  talk  in  responsible  circles  of 
the  cotton  kingdom  that  secession  would  surely 
follow  the  election  of  Fremont,  the  candidate  of 
Seward  and  the  new  Republican  party  in  the  North. 
In  Pennsylvania  alone  something  like  a  million 
dollars  was  spent  by  the  two  leading  parties  —  a 
huge  sum  for  that  time.  But  the  planters  won. 
They  surrounded  the  President-elect  and  made 
perfectly  sure  that  no  dangerous  men  should  get 
into  the  Cabinet.  The  men  who  had  directed  the 
policy  of  Pierce  now  directed  that  of  Buchanan; 
and  Davis,  recently  transferred  to  the  Senate, 
John  Slidell  of  Louisiana,  and  Jesse  Bright  of  In 
diana  were  the  powers  behind  the  throne.  The 
planters  still  had  the  majority  of  the  Senate  and 
the  Supreme  Court,  though  the  House  was  dead 
locked.  It  would  be  the  duty  of  the  President  to 
get  the  country  out  of  the  tangle  in  Kansas,  for,  if 
he  succeeded,  the  young  Republican  party,  which 
was  composed  of  the  most  heterogeneous  elements, 
would  probably  go  to  pieces. 

Buchanan  endeavored  earnestly  to  solve  the 


140  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Kansas  problem.  In  spite  of  some  opposition  from 
his  Southern  advisers,  he  appointed  Robert  Walker 
Governor  of  the  distracted  Territory.  Walker 
promptly  reported  that  the  only  way  out  of  the 
difficulty  was  to  let  the  people  decide  the  question 
of  slavery  for  themselves  without  let  or  hindrance. 
That  was  what  Douglas  had  said  all  along.  But 
such  a  policy  would  make  Kansas  a  free  State  and 
the  lower  South  could  not  surrender  so  easily. 
Happily  for  the  Southern  leaders,  the  Supreme 
Court  in  the  spring  of  1857  was  of  the  opinion  that 
an  owner  of  slaves  had  the  legal  right  to  carry  his 
human  property  into  any  Territory  and  keep  it 
regardless  of  all  local  opposition.  Under  the  far- 
reaching  Dred  Scott  decision,  it  would  seem  to 
be  the  duty  of  the  country  as  a  whole,  under  the 
Constitution,  to  guarantee  the  rights  of  property 
in  slaves  in  all  national  domains. 

If  this  decision  was  in  harmony  with  the  spirit 
of  the  Constitution,  and  it  certainly  seemed  to  be, 
the  popular  notion  that  the  people  of  each  Terri 
tory  might  forbid  slavery  was  utterly  untenable. 
Consequently  when  Walker  urged  the  President  to 
leave  the  problem  in  Kansas  to  the  vote  of  a  hostile 
local  population,  the  planters  with  one  voice  de 
nounced  the  idea.  They  pressed  about  the  pliant 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  141 

Buchanan,  they  carried  the  war  into  Congress, 
and  they  stirred  the  lower  South  to  resistance. 
All  the  debates  about  the  importation  of  slaves 
from  Africa,  the  futile  efforts  still  going  forward  at 
Madrid  for  the  purchase  of  Cuba,  the  filibustering 
in  Nicaragua,  and  the  efforts  to  procure  another 
part  of  Mexican  territory,  paled  into  insignificance 
before  the  crucial  question  whether  "a  mob"  in 
Kansas  should  be  allowed  to  deprive  Southerners 
of  rights  of  property  in  defiance  of  the  Federal 
Supreme  Court. 

While  Buchanan  wavered,  Douglas  issued  a 
declaration  of  war  upon  the  President  and  an 
nounced  that  he  would  carry  the  matter  before 
the  people  of  the  Northwest  for  decision.  Every 
Southern  Senator  and  almost  every  Southern 
leader  deprecated  such  a  move  and  denounced  the 
man  who  made  it.  But  Douglas  found  support  in 
the  North.  Republican  leaders,  sore  pressed  for  a 
popular  champion  of  their  cause,  talked  of  making 
him  their  candidate  for  1860.  The  planters  won 
the  President  to  their  side;  and  the  choice  between 
the  two  points  of  view  went  first  to  the  people  of 
Illinois  and  later  to  the  people  of  the  whole  coun 
try.  In  the  contest  in  Illinois,  there  arose  the  pro 
phetic  figure  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  the  very  embodi- 


142  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

ment  of  American  democracy,  declaring  for  simple 
majority  rule.  The  decisions  of  the  Supreme 
Court  must  yield  to  popular  votes;  laws  and  even 
constitutions  must  be  remade  to  suit  the  wishes  of 
simple  majorities.  If  the  Court  refused,  then  the 
Court  must  be  reconstituted;  if  laws  gave  more  to 
slaveholders  than  the  people  wished,  then  laws 
must  be  repealed.  Lincoln's  position  was  that  of 
one  who  appeals  to  the  referendum  and  recall 
today,  a  far  cry  indeed  from  that  which  had  led  to 
the  formation  of  the  Union.  If  Lincoln  had  his 
way,  the  United  States  would  become  a  democracy. 
While  Douglas  won  a  reelection  to  the  Senate 
on  the  issue  as  he  pressed  it,  there  was  in  reality 
little  difference  between  him  and  Lincoln  from  the 
viewpoint  of  the  lower  South.  What  did  it  matter 
to  the  owner  of  slaves  whether  all  the  people  of  the 
North  voted  down  his  rights  under  the  Constitu 
tion  or  whether  the  same  thing  were  done  by  a 
majority  in  a  single  Territory?  The  whole  point  to 
him  was  that  no  majority  anywhere  could  deprive 
him  of  rights  guaranteed  by  the  supreme  law  of 
the  land.  Upon  this  issue,  almost  every  planter, 
whether  of  the  cotton  or  of  the  tobacco  States, 
took  his  stand.  Yancey  threatened  revolution. 
The  South  Carolina  leaders,  following  Robert 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  143 

Barnwell  Rhett,  a  life-long  advocate  of  secession, 
began  to  "set  their  house  in  order,"  expecting  to 
leave  the  Union  in  1860.  Every  prominent  mem 
ber  of  Congress  from  the  South  veered  round  to 
the  position  of  Jefferson  Davis,  who  had  said 
mournfully  that  the  cotton  States  might  have  to 
leave  the  Union,  although  he  refused  to  counsel 
such  a  course.  Newspapers  and  teachers  and 
preachers  of  all  the  churches  in  the  lower  South 
declared  that  the  submission  of  the  rights  of  the 
planters  to  plebiscites  was  revolutionary  and  sub 
versive  of  all  law  and  order.  They  prophesied 
that  the  business  men  of  the  North  would  one  day 
rue  the  choice  they  were  about  to  make.  But  it 
was  not  the  business  men  of  the  North  who  were 
getting  nervous  or  unruly  —  it  was  the  democracy 
of  the  North. 

The  rulers  of  the  cotton  kingdom  prepared  for 
the  struggle  of  1860  while  the  war  of  North  and 
South  went  sadly  on  in  Kansas.  Congress  re 
mained  deadlocked:  the  Senate  favored  the  South; 
the  House,  the  North.  Everything  depended  up 
on  the  outcome  of  the  party  conventions  and  the 
election  of  1860.  The  Democrats  met  at  Charles 
ton.  Douglas  prepared  long  beforehand  to  win  a 
majority  of  the  delegates  to  that  body.  He  would 


144  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

have  the  convention  declare  in  favor  of  popular  sov 
ereignty  as  the  preceding  convention  had  done  with 
the  aid  of  Southern  votes;  and  then  he  would  have 
the  convention  nominate  him  to  the  presidency. 
If  he  succeeded  in  both  these  moves,  he  would 
almost  certainly  be  the  successor  to  Buchanan. 

To  Davis  and  his  planter  followers  such  an  out 
come  would  be  only  a  little  less  fatal  than  the  elec 
tion  of  a  "black  Republican."  The  cotton  States 
could  never  submit  to  a  President  who  juggled  with 
the  rights  of  property.  They  must  first  of  all 
defeat  Douglas.  If  they  succeeded  in  this  they 
might  nominate  a  safer  man  and  endeavor  to  defeat 
the  Republicans  in  the  succeeding  general  election. 
In  other  words,  the  planters  had  reached  the  point 
when  they  would  deliberately  sacrifice  in  the 
Northwest  their  allies  of  long  standing  rather 
than  yield  an  inch  in  the  matter  of  their  rights 
in  the  Territories.  Having  vanquished  Douglas, 
they  would  then  meet  Seward  or  Lincoln  with 
the  hope  of  further  success. 

When  the  Charleston  convention  met  in  April, 
1860,  a  battle  royal  began  between  Douglas  Demo 
crats  and  the  reactionary  members  of  the  party 
who  accepted  the  leadership  of  Jefferson  Davis. 
Neither  faction  would  yield.  When  this  became 


THE  PLANTER  IN  POLITICS  145 

clear,  Yancey,  the  greatest  orator  of  the  South 
since  Patrick  Henry,  made  one  of  the  famous  un- 
reported  speeches  of  history .  He  reasoned  with  the 
Northern  delegates,  he  stirred  the  emotions  of  the 
crowded  galleries,  and  he  raised  the  enthusiasm  of 
his  planter  followers  to  the  highest  pitch.  When 
he  finished,  bade  farewell  to  the  convention,  and 
took  his  leave,  the  members  from  all  the  lower 
Southern  States  followed  him.  The  first  great  bolt 
in  American  history  had  taken  place.  Buchanan 
and  Davis,  still  in  Washington,  approved;  John 
Slidell,  August  Belmont,  and  the  Tammany  Hall 
representatives  lent  Yancey  assistance  and  money; 
and  the  reactionary  elements  of  the  party  in  the 
North  applauded. 

The  great  planter  machine  had  reached  its  acme 
of  influence  and  power;  and  all  the  cotton  coun 
try  submitted  to  its  dictation.  In  fact,  all  the  ar 
ticulate  elements  of  the  lower  South  were  repre 
sented  in  it.  This  organization  now  moved  toward 
the  nomination  of  a  candidate  of  its  own.  The 
planters  met  again  in  Richmond  and  nominated 
for  President  John  C.  Breckinridge,  a  moderate 
Kentucky  politician.  The  Douglas  men  reas 
sembled  in  Baltimore  and  nominated  their  hero. 
To  the  surprise  of  most  Southern  public  men,  the 


146  THE  COTTON  KINGDOM 

Republicans  made  Lincoln  their  standard  bearer. 
Still  other  candidates  were  put  forward  by  the  so- 
called  Constitutional  Union  party. 

Lincoln  was  elected.  The  cotton  States  pre 
pared  to  leave  the  Union.  Their  unique  culture, 
their  still  powerful  position  in  national  politics, 
and  their  remarkable  prosperity  were  all  staked 
upon  the  event.  They  would  form  a  State  in  which 
the  laboring  class  should  be  the  property  of  the 
capitalist;  they  would  perfect  a  society  in  which 
every  man  should  have  a  place  and  every  man 
should  keep  his  place.  In  the  lower  South  there 
were  to  be  slaves,  farmers,  and  gentlemen.  There 
would  be  no  poverty;  nor  would  there  be  any 
serious  disagreement  on  the  fundamentals  of  soci 
ety,  for  sermons,  speeches,  books,  and  teaching 
in  the  colleges  were  all  to  defend  the  existing 
order  and  to  look  towards  its  perfecting.  Society 
in  the  lower  South  was  to  be  the  realization  un 
hindered  of  the  social  philosophy  which  began  with 
the  repudiation  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
and  ended  with  the  explicit  recognition  of  social 
inequality.  There  was  then  no  doubt  of  final 
success,  and  there  was  little  if  any  serious  protest 
against  the  ideals  that  were  to  be  realized. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 
CHAPTER  I 

BROWN,  WILLIAM  G.,  The  Lower  South  in  American 
History,  1902.  Valuable  for  its  portrayal  of 
leaders  and  methods. 

CLAIBORNE,  J.  F.  H.,  The  Life  and  Correspondence  of 
John  A.  Quitman,  %  vols.  1860.  Letters  and  ideals 
of  a  Northern  man  turned  great  planter. 

FORTIER,  ALCEE,  The  History  of  Louisiana,  4  vols. 
1904.  The  work  of  an  ardent  Louisianian  and 
Southerner;  but  good. 

GARRISON,  GEORGE  P.,  Texas:  A  Contest  of  Civilizations, 
1903,  in  the  American  Commonwealth  series. 

HAMILTON,  PETER  J.,  The  Colonization  of  the  South, 
Philadelphia,  1904,  vol.  in  in  The  History  of  North 
America. 

JERVEY,  THEODORE  D.,  Robert  Young  Hayne  and  his 
Times,  1909.  Contains  excellent  material  on 
South  Carolina  in  the  period  of  transition  from 
strong  Federalism  to  ardent  particularism. 

PHILLIPS,  ULRICH  B.,  The  Plantation  and  Frontier,  Cleve 
land,  1910,  two  volumes  of  the  Documentary  History 
of  American  Industrial  Society.  Contains  much 
original  material  on  the  history  of  cotton  farming. 
147 


148  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

SMEDES,  SUSAN  D.,  Memorials  of  a  Southern  Planter, 
New  York,  1890.  Valuable  for  planter  ideals,  but 
rather  roseate. 


CHAPTER  II 

DE  Bow,  J.  D.  B.,  The  Industrial  Resources  of  the 
Southern  and  Western  States,  3  vols.  1852-53. 
Exceedingly  valuable  for  social  and  economic 
life. 

HAMMOND,  MATTHEW  B.,  The  Cotton  Industry,  New 
York,  1897.  Excellent  treatment,  but  not  ex 
haustive. 

KETTEL,  T.  P.,  Southern  Wealth  and  Northern  Profits, 
New  York,  1860.  To  be  used  with  discrimina 
tion. 

OLMSTED,  FREDERICK  LAW,  A  Journey  in  the  Seaboard 
Slave  States,  New  York,  1856.  Same  author:  A 
Journey  in  the  Back  Country,  New  York,  1860. 
These  well-known  books  are  very  valuable;  but  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  they  were  written  by  an 
observer  hostile  to  slavery. 

PHILLIPS,  ULRICH  B.,  Transportation  in  the  Eastern 
Cotton  Belt,  New  York,  1908.  The  only  work  on 
the  subject.  Valuable. 

RHODES,  JAMES  FORD,  History  of  the  United  States  from 
the  Compromise  of  1850,  7  vols.  1893-1906.  One  of 
the  greatest  works  on  American  history.  Reliable 
at  almost  every  point.  The  tone  is  perhaps  too 
patriotic. 

South,  The,  in  the  Building  of  the  Nation,  Richmond, 
1909.  Vols.  v  and  vi  on  the  economic  life  of  the 
South  are  good  but  of  uneven  value. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  149 

CHAPTER  III 

COBB,  THOMAS  R.  R.,  Inquiry  into  the  Law  of  Negro 
Slavery,  Philadelphia,  1858.  A  Southern  statement 
of  the  laws  by  which  slavery  was  maintained. 

DEW,  THOMAS  R.,  Review  of  the  Debates  in  the  Virginia 
Legislature  of  1832.  Published  in  The  Pro-Slavery 
Argument.,  Charleston,  1852.  Ablest  of  all  the 
works  treating  slavery  from  historical  and  social 
points  of  view. 

ELLIOTT,  E.  N.,  Cotton  is  King  and  Pro-Slavery  Argu 
ments,  Augusta,  1860.  A  collection  of  the  pro- 
slavery  writings. 

FITZHUGH,  GEORGE,  Sociology  for  the  South,  Richmond, 
1854.  An  important  book,  but  weakened  by  its 
repetitions.  Contains  many  suggestions  for  the 
modern  sociologist. 

HOUSTON,  DAVID  F.,  A  Critical  Study  of  Nullification 
in  South  Carolina,  New  York,  1896.  Contains 
significant  statements  of  influential  leaders  on 
the  subject  of  social  subordination. 

NOTT,  JOSIAH  C.,  Types  of  Mankind,  Philadelphia, 
1854.  A  sort  of  forerunner  of  Darwin's  ideas  about 
species  and  races.  Its  fault  from  the  Southern 
point  of  view  was  that  it  treated  the  Biblical 
authority  with  scant  courtesy. 

RHODES,  JAMES  FORD,  History  of  the  United  States,  vol. 
i,  chapter  iv.  This  chapter  treats  the  facts  of 
slavery  with  great  fairness  but  without  recogni 
tion  of  the  philosophical  basis  of  the  pro-slavery 
contention. 

WESTON,  GEORGE  M.,  The  Progress  of  Slavery  in 
the  United  States,  Washington,  1857.  A  warning 


150  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

that  the  extreme  pro-slavery  philosophy  had  over 
reached  itself  and  that  the  decline  of  slavery  might 
be  an  economic  benefit. 

CHAPTER  IV 

BALDWIN,  JOSEPH  G.,  The  Flush  Times  in  Alabama  and 
Mississippi,  New  York,  1853.  Recent  reprint  by 
Americus  Book  Company,  Augusta,  Georgia. 

Hayne,  Paul  Hamilton,  Poems  of,  illustrated  edition, 
Boston,  1882. 

LONGSTREET,  AUGUSTUS  B.,  Georgia  Scenes,  Augusta, 
1840. 

MIMS,  EDWIN,  Sidney  Lanier,  Boston,  1905,  in  Ameri 
can  Men  of  Letters  series.  A  valuable  work,  par 
ticularly  good  in  its  interpretation  of  planter  life. 

South,  The,  in  the  Building  of  the  Nation,  Richmond, 
1909,  vol.  vin,  on  Southern  fiction  is  edited  by 
Edwin  Mims.  A  work  of  uneven  merit,  but  very 
useful. 

Timrod,  Henry,  Poems  of,  memorial  edition,  Boston, 
1899.  An  interesting  and  sympathetic  introduc 
tion  adds  great  value  to  the  work. 

THOMPSON,  WILLIAM  TAPPAN,  Major  Jones's  Courtship, 
Philadelphia,  1840. 

TRENT,  WILLIAM  P.,  William  Gilmore  Simms,  Boston, 
1892,  in  American  Men  of  Letters  series.  One  of 
the  best  books  of  its  class  in  American  biography. 

TRENT,  WILLIAM  P.,  Southern  Writers,  New  York,  1905. 
For  the  classics  and  the  intellectual  life  as  mani 
fested  in  the  schools  and  colleges,  The  South  in 
the  Building  of  the  Nation,  vol.  vn,  is  especially 
important.  The  novels  of  Simms  and  Kennedy 
may  still  be  found  in  the  second-hand  bookstores. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  151 

The  best  of  these  are  perhaps  Guy  Rivers  by  Simms 
and  Swallow  Barn  by  Kennedy. 

CHAPTER  V 

ALEXANDER,  GROSS,  The  History  of  the  Methodist  Epis 
copal  Church,  South,  New  York,  1894,  vol.  xi  of 
The  American  Church  History  series. 

BROADUS,  JOHN  ALBERT,  Memoir  of  James  Petigru 
Boyce,  New  York,  1893.  Valuable  for  the  history 
of  Baptist  educational  work. 

GREEN,  EDWIN  L.,  A  History  of  the  University  of  South 
Carolina,  Columbia,  1916.  A  full  account  of  the 
subject  with  much  biographical  material. 

HATCHER,  WILLIAM  E.,  The  Life  of  J.  B.  Jeter,  Balti 
more,  1887.  Excellent,  with  many  data  on  the 
social  life  of  the  South. 

JOHNSON,  THOMAS  CARY,  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Ben 
jamin  Morgan  Palmer,  Richmond,  1906.  Impor 
tant  for  the  history  of  the  lower  South. 

JOHNSON,  THOMAS  CARY,  History  of  the  Southern  Pres 
byterian  Church,  New  York,  1900. 

MATLACK,  Lucius  C.,  The  Life  of  Orange  Scott,  New 
York,  1847.  A  rare  book  on  an  interesting  sub 
ject. 

MERIWETHER,  COLYER,  The  History  of  Higher  Educa 
tion  in  South  Carolina,  Washington,  1889.  A  valu 
able  Government  document.  Similar  histories  of 
education  in  the  South  were  published  by  the 
Government  about  the  same  time.  Edited  by 
Herbert  B.  Adams. 

McTYEiRE,  H.  N.,  The  Duties  of  Masters  and  Servants, 
Charleston,  1851.  Unique  and  valuable. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

RILEY,  B.  F.,  A  History  of  the  Baptists  in  the  South 
ern  States  East  of  the  Mississippi,  Philadelphia, 
1898. 

ROBERTSON,  ARCHIBALD  T.,  The  Life  and  Letters  of  John 
Albert  Broadus,  Philadelphia,  1909.  A  contribu 
tion  to  educational  history. 

SMITH,  GEORGE  G.,  The  Life  and  Letters  of  James  Osgood 
Andrew,  Nashville,  1883.  Valuable  for  the  history 
of  the  split  in  the  Methodist  Church. 

United  States  Census  of  1860.  Mortality  and  Miscel 
laneous  Statistics. 

CHAPTER  VI 

BROWN,  WILLIAM  GARROTT,  The  Lower  South  in  Ameri 
can  History,  New  York,  1902.  Contains  an  espe 
cially  good  essay  on  Yancey. 

BUTLER,  PIERCE,  Judah  P.  Benjamin,  in  American 
Crisis  Biographies,  Philadelphia,  1907. 

CLAIBORNE,  J.  F.  H.,  Mississippi  as  a  Province,  Terri 
tory,  and  State,  Jackson,  1880.  Political  parties 
and  campaigns. 

CLAY,  THOMAS  HART,  Henry  Clay,  in  American  Crisis 
Biographies,  Philadelphia,  1910. 

COLEMAN,  MRS.  CHAPMAN,  The  Life  of  John  J.  Critten- 
den  icith  Selections  from  his  Correspondence  and 
Speeches,  2  vols.  Philadelphia,  1871. 

DAVIS,  REUBEN,  Recollections  of  Mississippi  and 
Mississippians,  Boston,  1891. 

DODD,  WILLIAM  E.,  Jefferson  Davis,  in  American  Crisis 
Biographies,  Philadelphia,  1907. 

DuBosE,  J.  W.,  The  Life  and  Times  of  William 
Lowndes  Yancey,  Birmingham,  1892. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  153 

FOOTE,  HENRY  S.,  Casket  of  Reminiscences,  Wash 
ington,  1874.  To  be  taken  with  considerable 
allowance  for  personal  bias. 

HEARON,  CLEO,  Mississippi  and  the  Compromise  of  1850. 
Publications  of  the  Mississippi  Historical  Society, 
1914. 

HODGSON,  JOSEPH,  The  Cradle  of  the  Confederacy, 
Mobile,  1876. 

INGLE,  EDWARD,  Southern  Sidelights,  Baltimore,  1896. 

JAMESON,  J.  F.,  The  Correspondence  of  John  C.  Calhoun, 
Washington,  1899.  Report  of  the  American  His 
torical  Association. 

JOHNSON,  ALLEN,  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  New  York,  1908. 

JOHNSTON  and  BROWNE,  Life  of  Alexander  H.  Stephens, 
Philadelphia,  1878. 

PERRY,  B.  F.,  Reminiscences  of  Public  Men,  Philadel 
phia,  1883. 

PHILLIPS,  U.  B.,  The  Correspondence  of  Toombs,  Stephens, 
and  Cobb,  Washington,  1913.  Report  of  the 
American  Historical  Association. 

PRYOR,  MRS.  ROGER  A.,  Reminiscences  of  Peace  and 
War,  New  York,  1904. 

RUSSELL,  WILLIAM  H.,  My  Diary,  North  and  South, 
London,  1862. 


INDEX 


Adams,  J.  Q.,  opposes  Mexican 
War,  124;  proposes  secession 
of  Northern  States,  125 

Agassiz,  L.  J.  R.,  113 

Aiken  family,  25 

Alabama,  110,  120;  economic  re 
sources  of,  2, 3;  see  also  Mobile, 
Montgomery 

Alabama,  University  of,  112, 
113,  114 

Allen,  William,  Senator  from 
Ohio,  on  side  of  the  South,  130 

Andrew,  Bishop,  of  Georgia,  test 
slavery  case,  105 

Apprentices,  Negro,  136 

Art  in  South,  82 

Audubon,  J.  J.,  Birds  of  America, 
Il3;QuadrupedsofAmerica,H3 

Bachman,  John,  113 

Baldwin,  J.  G.,  89,  90;  Flush 
Times  in  Alabama  and  Missis 
sippi,  90 

Baptist  Church,  in  South,  20, 
102;  in  North,  104;  attitude 
toward  slavery,  107-08;  theo 
logical  schools,  110 

Baton  Rouge,  98  (note) 

Bell,  John,  130 

Belmont,  August,  145 

Bigler,  Asa,  130 

Books  owned  by  planters,  62-63, 
79-82 

Boston,  40,  41;  imports  and  ex 
ports,  28 

Boyce,  J.  P.,  110 

Breckenridge,  J.  C.,  145 

Bright,  Jesse,  Senator  from  In 


diana,  on  side  of  South,  130; 

directs  policy  of  Buchanan,  139 
Brinkerhoff,  Jacob,  125 
Brown,  J.  E.,  31 
Buchanan,  James,  122;  candidate 

for  President,  138;  elected,  139; 

and  the  Kansas  problem,  139- 

141;  approves  Yancey,  145 
Byron,    George    Gordon    Noel, 

Lord,  appeal  to  South,  81 

Calhoun  J.  C.,  84,  108;  opinion 
of  slavery,  58-60;  advocate  of 
expansion,  123;  prompts  mass 
meeting  in  Jackson,  Miss.,  126; 
failure  and  death,  127 

California,  Polk  takes  possession 
of,  124;  question  of  slavery  in. 
126,  127,  132 

Calvinism,  100-02 

Capers,  William,  Methodist 
preacher,  106 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  doctrine  of 
class  distinction,  63;  influence 
in  Prussia,  63 

Carriage  travel,  77-79 

Cartwright,  Peter,  104 

Cass,  Lewis,  on  expansion,  124; 
defeated  for  presidency,  125; 
on  side  of  South,  130 

Catholic  Church  in  South,  Ro 
man,  13-14,  98  (note) 

Central  America,  South  plans 
conquest  of,  46;  filibustering 
against,  136 

Central  Pacific  Railroad,  132 

Charleston,  2,  10-11,  16,  18,  36, 
40,  70,  82,  85,  99,  113,  131; 


155 


156 


INDEX 


Charleston — Continued 
convention  of  Democrats,  143- 
145 

Charleston  and  Augusta  Railway, 
36 

Charleston  Mercury,  79 

Chestnut,  James,  41 

Cheves,  Langdon,  113 

Clapp,  Dr.,  in  New  Orleans,  19 

Classics,  devotion  of  South  to, 
83-84 

Clay,  Henry,  sponsor  of  Demo 
cratic  party,  122;  defeated  for 
presidency,  124;  in  Senate, 
126;  Compromise  of  1850,  127; 
death,  129 

Clothes,  of  slaves,  75;  of  South 
ern  gentlemen,  76;  of  Southern 
ladies,  76-77 

Cobb,  Howell,  25 

Compromise  of  1850,  127 

Cooper,  Dr.  Thomas,  97,  100, 
101 

Cotton,  rise  in  price  (1845-50), 
25;  annual  crops  (1850-60),  26 

Cotton  belt,  extent,  1;  rainfall, 
2;  rivers,  2-3;  soil,  3;  clearing 
of  land,  4-5;  Indians  driven 
out  of,  6-7;  labor  problem,  7; 
slavery,  7-9;  immigration,  8- 
9;  need  of  better  cultivation, 
43;  see  also  South,  Lower,  and 
names  of  States 

Cotton-planters,  drive  out  In 
dians,  6-7;  recruited  from 
older  South,  8-10,  32;  rise  of 
great,  24-47;  social  philoso 
phy,  48-70;  homes,  71-72; 
families,  72-73;  home  life,  73; 
slaves,  73-76;  dress,  76-77; 
travel,  77-79;  books  and 
magazines,  79-80;  culture,  95- 
96;  in  politics,  118  et  seq.; 
bibliography,  148 

Court,  County,  118-20 

Crittenden,  J.  J.,  his  nephew 
killed  in  Cuba,  137 

Cuba,  South  plans  conquest  of, 
46;  effort  to  purchase,  128, 136, 


141;  filibustering  against,  136, 
137 
Cushing,  Caleb,  130 

Darwin,  Charles,  112 

Davis,  Jefferson,  121,  129; 
adopts  idea  of  class  distinc 
tion,  62;  on  expansion,  124; 
for  unity,  130;  directs  policy 
of  Buchanan,  139;  on  seces 
sion,  143;  against  Douglas, 
144;  approves  Yancey,  145 

Davis,  Mrs.  Jefferson,  41,  77 

Davis,  Joseph,  25 

Davis,  Reuben,  22 

De  Bow,  J.  D.  B.,  Industrial 
Resources  of  the  Southern  and 
Western  States,  quoted,  44;  at 
University  of  New  Orleans,  112 

De  Bow's  Review,  80 

Democratic  party,  124,  138; 
growth  in  the  South,  122;  de 
feat  of,  125;  success  of,  127, 
129-30;  convention  at  Charles 
ton,  143-45 

Dew,  T.  R.,  social  philosophy  of, 
49-51,  58;  made  head  of  Wil 
liam  and  Mary  College,  53; 
quoted,  53 

Dickens,  Charles,  condemns 
slavery,  60;  has  no  appeal  for 
South,  81 

Dix,  J.  A.,  130 

Dodge,  Senator  from  Iowa,  on 
side  of  South,  130 

Douglas,  S.  A.,  married  to  a 
Southerner,  41;  attitude  on 
expansion,  124;  on  side  of 
South,  130;  promotes  Central 
Pacific  Railroad,  132;  Kansas- 
Nebraska  bill,  132-33;  Demo 
cratic  candidate  for  President 
(1856),  138;  defeated  for  nom 
ination,  138;  writes  party 
platform,  138;  and  popular 
sovereignty,  140,  141-42;  re- 
elected  to  Senate,  142;  at 
Democratic  convention  in 
Charleston,  143-44;  nominated 


INDEX 


157 


Douglas,  S.  A. — Continued 
for   presidency  at  Baltimore, 
145 

Douglas,  Mrs.  S.  A.,  41,  77 

Education  in  South,  religious 
tendencies  in,  97-98;  theo 
logical  schools  and  denomina 
tional  colleges,  110-11;  col 
leges  and  universities,  111-14; 
common  schools,  114-15,  131; 
illiteracy,  115;  religious  educa 
tion  for  slaves,  116-17,  131; 
no  secular  education  for  slaves, 
117;  bibliography,  151-52 

Episcopal  Church  in  South,  14- 
15,  99 

Expansion,  South 's  desire  for, 
11-12,  46-47,  123-24,  128, 
136-37 

Farmers  of  South,  91-95 

Finance,  bank  deposits  in  South, 
28-29;  financial  situation,  29- 
30;  see  also  Tariff 

Fitzhugh,  George,  Sociology  for 
the  South,  64-67;  Cannibals  All; 
or  Slaves  without  Masters,  67 

Florida,  120 

Foote,  H.  S.,  62,  127 

Fremont,  J.  C.,  Republican  can 
didate  for  President  (1856), 
139 

French  in  South,  13,  17-18 

Fuller,  Richard,  107 

Furman  University,  110 

Gadsden,  Christopher,  mission  to 
Mexico,  128,  132 

Gaines,  General,  19 

Garrison,  W.  L.,  105,  106 

Georgia,  6,  100,  103,  110,  111, 
120;  economic  resources,  2,  3; 
see  also  Savannah 

Georgia,  University  of,  112 

Germans  in  South,  23 

Giles,  W.  B.,  Governor  of  Vir 
ginia,  50-51 

Going,  Jonathan,  104 


Goldsmith,    Oliver,     appeal     to 

South,  81 

Goodlow,  D.  R.,  68 
Gottschalk,  L.  M.,  83 

Hairston  family,  25 

Hammond,  J.  H.,  61 

Harper,  Chancellor  of  the  Su 
preme  Court  of  South  Carolina, 
elaborates  Dew's  philosophy, 
53-58;  A  Memoir  on  Slavery, 
54;  on  education,  114 

Harper's  Magazine,  80 

Harper's  Weekly,  80 

Hayne,  PH.,  inspired  by  Simms, 
87;  compared  with  Timrod,  88; 
"Laureate  of  the  South,"  88; 
echo  of  English  literature,  88- 
89 

Helper,  H.  R.,  Impending  Crisis 
of  the  South,  68-69 

Holley,  Horace,  98,  102 

Homes,  of  whites  in  South,  71- 
72,  91-95;  of  slaves,  74 

Hooper,  J.  J.,  Simon  Suggs,  89 

Houston,  Sam,  130 

Howard  College,  110 

Huguenots  in  South  Carolina,  17 

Humorists  of  the  South,  89-90 

Illinois,  an  anti-slavery  State,  7- 

8;  Lincoln-Douglas  contest  in, 

141-42 
Illiteracy  in  South,  115 
Immigration,  133 
Indiana,   an   anti-slavery   State, 

7-8 
Indians   in   South,    5-6;    driven 

out  by  planters,  6-7 

Jackson,  Andrew,  122;  fails  to 
protect  Indians  in  South,  6; 
elected  by  South  and  West,  12; 
uncertainty  as  to  tariff,  12 

Fefferson,  Thomas,  his  home  sold 
in  1829,  9;  ideals  discredited 
in  South,  48-49,  51,  56,  100; 
devotion  to  classics,  83;  a  deist, 
98;  founds  University  of  Vir 
ginia,  98 


158 


INDEX 


Johnson,  Andrew,  31,  130 
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  appeal  to 

South,  81 
Judicial  system  of  South,  118-21 

Kansas,  question  of  slavery  in, 

139-41,  143 

Kansas-Nebraska  bill,  132-33 
Kennedy,  J.  P.,  86-87;  Swallow 

Barn,  86;  Horseshoe  Robinson, 

86 

Kentucky,  37,  40 
Knickerbocker  Magazine,  80 

Labor,  slave,  7,  45,  73,  134,  146; 
problem  of  foreign,  133;  negro 
apprentices,  136 

Le  Conte,  Joseph,  112,  113 

Lee,  Jesse,  104 

Libraries  of  planters,  62-63,  79- 
82 

Lieber,  Francis,  112 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  on  slavery 
problem,  27;  Lincoln-Douglas 
contest  in  Illinois,  141-42; 
elected  President,  146 

Literature  of  South,  85-90 

Longstreet,  Rev.  A.  B.,  89,  91; 
Georgia  Scenes,  89 

Lopez,  Narciso,  leads  expedition 
against  Cuba,  137 

Louisiana,  120;  economic  re 
sources,  2;  see  also  New  Or 
leans 

Louisiana,  University  of,  112 

Macaulay,  Lord,  condemns  slav 
ery,  60 
McSparran,  Methodist  preacher, 

106 
McTyeire,  H.  N.,  106;  Duties  of 

Masters     and     Servants,     106 

(note) 
Macy,   Jesse,    The   Anti-Slavery 

Crusade,    cited,     127     (note), 

133  (note) 
Madison,  James,  poverty  of,  9; 

on  class  distinction,  51 
Manly,  Dr.  Basil,  President  of 


University  of  Alabama,  107. 
Ill,  114 

Mann,  Horace,  influences  educa 
tion  in  the  South,  114 

Manufacturing  in  South,  44-46, 
131 

Marcy.  W.  L.,  Secretary  of  State, 
128 

Marshall,  Daniel,  102 

Marshall,  John,  Chief  Justice, 
48,  51 

Martineau,  Harriet,  66;  con 
demns  slavery,  60 

Maryland,  7,  42 

Mercer  University,  110 

Methodist  Church,  in  South, 
20,  102-04,  105-06,  110,  111; 
in  North,  104;  separates  on 
subject  of  slavery,  105-06 

Methodist  Church  South,  106 

Mexican  War,  12,  47,  124 

Mexico,  125;  plans  for  conquest 
of,  46-47;  Gadsden  sent  to,  128, 
132;  attacked  by  Walker,  137 

Mississippi,  120,  137;  economic 
resources,  2,  3;  railroads,  36; 
mass  meeting  at  Jackson 
(1849),  126 

Mississippi,  University  of,  112 

Mobile,  11,  36,  37,  98  (note),  99, 
113 

Montgomery,  99,  131 

Mountaineers  of  South,  34-35 

Music  in  South,  82-83 

Nashville  (Tenn.)»  Southern  con 
vention  at,  126,  130 

Negroes,  free,  18,  136;  see  also 
Slavery 

New  Jersey,  College  of  (Prince 
ton),  100,  101 

New  Mexico,  Polk  takes  posses 
sion  of,  124;  question  of 
slavery  in,  126 

New  Orleans,  36,  37,  98  (note), 
99,  113;  French  in,  13,  17- 
18;  other  nationalities  in,  18; 
tone  in  1850,  19;  changes,  19; 
financial  situation  in,  28 


INDEX 


159 


New  Orleans  Picayune,  79; 
quoted,  26  (note) 

New  Orleans,  University  of,  112 

New  York,  41;  imports  and  ex 
ports,  27-28;  bank  deposits  in, 
28;  influence  of  cotton  on,  43 

Nicaragua,  filibustering  in,  137, 
141 

North,  cotton  planters  buy  goods 
in,  28;  Methodists  and  Bap 
tists  in,  104 

North  American  Review,  80 

North  Carolina,  19,  37,  39,  42, 
100,  101,  110;  economic  re 
sources,  2;  slavery  in,  68 

Nott,  J.  C.,  112 

Olmsted,  F.  L.,  A  Journey  in  the 
Seaboard  Slave  States,  cited, 
30,  91;  Journey  Through  the 
Back  Country,  cited,  91;  de 
scribes  life  of  poor  whites,  94 

Oregon,  Polk  takes  possession  of, 
124 

Ostend  manifesto,  136-37 

Owen,  R.  D.,  113 

^Palmer,    Dr.    B.   M.,    83.    Ill; 

quoted,  109 

Parties,  see  Political  parties 

Pennsylvania,  139 

Philadelphia,  40;  imports  and  ex 
ports,  28;  bank  deposits  in, 
28-29 

Philosophy,  Social,  of  planters, 
48-70,  146 

Pierce,  Franklin,  122,  128.  138, 
139 

Plantations,  life  on,  71  et  seq.; 
planters'  homes,  71-72;  fami 
lies,  72-73;  slaves  on,  73-76 

Planters,  see  Cotton-planters 

Poets  of  South,  85-88 

Poindexter,  A.  M.,  107 

Political  parties  in  South,  121- 
122,  123-24 

Politics  in  South,  11-13.  118 
et  seq.;  bibliography,  152-53 

Polk,  J.  K.,  122,  124,  125 


Poor  whites,  31-34;  94-95 
Population  of  South,  in  1850,  10; 

relative  decline  in,  133-34 
Prentiss,  Sergeant,  10  (note),  22 
Presbyterian  Church,  in  South, 

20,  99-102,  111;  South  in  con 
trol  of,  108;  theological  schools, 
110 

Press,  Freedom  of,  subject  of 
abolition  prohibited,  70 

Quitman,  J.  A.,  10  (note) 

Railroads  in  South,  36-37,  131- 

132 

Rainfall  in  cotton  belt,  2,  43 
Randolph,  John,  poverty  of,  9; 

discredits    Jefferson's    ideals, 

48,51 

Randolph-Macon  College,  110 
Religion  in  South,  13-15,  19,  20- 

21,  97-111;  bibliography,  151- 
152;  see  also  names  of  denomi 
nations 

Hhett,  R.  B.,  142-43 

Richmond  Enquirer,  79 

Ritchie,  Thomas,  127 

Rivers  of  cotton  belt,  2-3 

Roads  in  South,  35 

Roman  Catholics  in  South,  13— 

14,  98  (note) 
Ruffin,  Edmund,  43 
Ruffner,  W.  H.,  114 
Runnels,  H.  G.,  30  (note) 

Savannah,  36,  99,  131 

Scott,  Dred,  decision,  140 

Scott,  Orange,  105 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  appeal  to 
South,  62-63,  81 

Scott,  General  Winfield,  nomi 
nated  for  President,  127-28 

Secession,  126,  127,  139,  142-43, 
146 

Seward,  W.  H.,  Whig  leader, 
127;  connected  with  new  Re 
publican  party,  139 

Shakespeare,  William,  appeal 
in  South,  81-82 


160 


INDEX 


Simms,  W.  G.,  attitude  on 
slavery,  61;  Lyrical  and  Other 
Poems,  85;  as  a  poet,  85;  as  a 
novelist,  85;  Guy  Rivers,  85; 
The  Yemassee,  85;  Partisan, 
85;  typically  Southern,  86; 
echo  of  English  literature,  88- 
89 

Slavery,  problem  in  older  South, 
7-8;  number  of  slaves,  7,  10; 
emigration  of  owners,  8-9; 
increase  in  value  of  slaves,  9, 
26-27;  slave  population  of 
lower  South  (1850),  10;  ne 
groes  as  slave  owners,  18; 
slaves  the  index  of  wealth,  25; 
evil  increased  by  prosperity, 
26;  slaves  bound  to  planter 
system,  33;  slaves  employed 
in  cotton  mills,  45;  Dew 
argues  for,  49-51;  rights  of 
slaves,  52;  The  Pro-Slavery 
Argument,  53  (note),  58  (note); 
Harper  argues  for,  53-58;  Cal- 
houn  on,  58-60;  compared  to 
English  industrialism,  61; 
Fitzhugh's  Sociology,  64-67; 
Goodlow  on,  68;  Helper,  Im 
pending  Crisis  of  the  South, 
68-69;  duties  of  slaves,  73; 
care  of  slaves,  74-76;  attitude 
of  churches  on,  102-11;  reli 
gious  education  for  slaves, 
116-17;  issue  in  1850,  126;  im 
portation  of  slaves,  131,  134- 
136;  popular  sovereignty  in 
territories  as  regards,  138; 
Dred  Scott  decision,  140;  in 
Kansas,  140-41,  143;  bibli 
ography,  149-50 

Slave-trade,  39-40,  131,  134-36 

Slidell,  John,  129;  attitude  to 
ward  slavery,  62;  attends  De 
mocratic  convention  at  Cincin 
nati,  138;  directs  policy  of  Bu 
chanan,  139;  approves  Yancey, 
145 

Smith,  Adam,  ideas  attacked  by 
Filzhugh,  64 


Smith,  Dr.  W.  A.,  of  Virginia, 
106,  110-11 

Soil  of  cotton  belt,  3 

Soule,  Joshua,  106 

Soule,  Pierre,  sent  to  Spain,  128; 
mission  not  successful,  136 

South  Carolina,  12,  39,  100,  103, 
110,  120;  economic  resources, 
2;  aristocracy  in,  16-17;  Hu 
guenots  in,  17;  upholds  slavery, 
60-61;  religious  attitude  in, 
101-02;  recommends  repeal  of 
foreign  slave  laws,  134 ;  see  also 
Charleston 

South  Carolina,  University  of, 
97,  112 

South,  Lower,  population  in 
1850,  10;  exports,  10;  wealth, 
11,  24  et  seq.',  political  control 
by,  11-13, 118  et  seq. ;  churches, 
13-15;  morals,  13-16,  20-22; 
racial  elements  in,  16-20,  22- 
23;  religion,  20-21,  97  et 
seq.',  economic  potentiality,  22; 
small  farmer  in,  30,  91-94; 
"crackers"  and  poor  whites, 
31-34,  94-95;  factors  bind 
ing  to  older  South,  37-40; 
economic  and  social  connec 
tion  with  North,  40,  41-42; 
deterioration  of  cotton  lands, 
43;  remedy  for  evil,  43-44; 
manufacturing,  44-46;  planta 
tion  life,  71-79;  literature  and 
art,  79  et  seq.',  bibliography, 
147-53;  see  also  Slavery 

Southern  Literary  Messenger,  68, 
80 

Southern  Pacific  Railroad,  131- 
132 

Southern  Presbyterian  Review, 
108 

Southern  Presbyterian  Theologi 
cal  Seminary,  101 

Southern  Review,  80 

Stephens,  A.  H.,  121,  129 

Stephenson,  N.  W.,  Abraham 
Lincoln  and  the  Union,  cited 
133  (note) 


INDEX 


161 


Stevens,  Thaddeus,  influences 
education  in  South,  114 

Tammany  Hall,  ally  of  South, 
130,  145 

Tariff,  South  Carolina  and  nulli 
fication,  12;  compromise,  of 
1833,  12;  protective  policy, 
46  (note) 

Taylor,  Zachary,  125,  126 

Tazewell,  L.  W.,  51 

Tennessee,  19,  40,  126 

Texas,  120;  campaign  for  annex 
ation  of,  11;  Revolution  of 
1836,  11-12;  annexation  of,  12, 
124 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  appeal  to 
South,  81;  Kennedy  collabo 
rates  with,  87 

Theater  in  South,  82 

Thompson,  W.  T.,  Major  Jones's 
Courtship.  89 

Thornwell,  J.  H.,  101,  108,  114- 
115 

Timrod,  Henry,  87-88;  Cotton 
Boll,  87;  The  Lily  Confidante, 
87;  Vision  of  Poesy,  87;  echo 
of  English  literature,  88-89 

Tobacco,  7;  value  of  crops  (1850), 
37;  (1860),  37;  shipping  of,  38 

Toombs,  Robert,  129 

Toucy,  of  Connecticut,  130 

Transportation,  navigable  rivers 
in  cotton  belt,  2-3;  roads,  35; 
railroads,  36-37,  131-32;  the 
family  carriage,  78 

Transylvania  University,  98 

Trollope,  Mrs.,  condemns  slav 
ery,  60 

Turner,  Nat,  Rebellion,  49 

Van  Buren,  "Prince"  John,  130 

Van    Buren,     Martin,    opposes 

Mexican     War.     124;     anti- 


slavery  candidate  for  presi 
dency,  125;  returns  to  South 
ern  allegiance,  130 

Vicksburg,  131 

Virginia,  7,  9,  19,  37,  39,  42, 
110,  114;  judicial  system,  118- 
121 

Virginia,  University  of,  98,  111- 
112 


Walker,  Robert,  favors  annexa 
tion,  123;  made  Governor  of 
Kansas,  140 

Walker,  William,  137 

Wealth,  concentration  of,  24-25 

Webster,  Daniel,  opposes  Mexi 
can  War,  124 

Weightman,  Bishop,  of  South 
Carolina,  116 

Weston,  G.  M.,  The  Progress  of 
Slavery  in  the  United  States, 
69 

Whig  party,  125-26,  127 

Whisky,  manufacture  in  South, 
38 

Wilde,  R.  H.,  My  Life  is  Like  the 
Summer,  87 

Wiley,  C.  S.,  114 

William  and  Mary  College,  53 

Wilmot,  David,  125 

Wise,  Henry,  41 

Women  in  social  philosophy  of 
South,  52 

Writers,  85-90 


Yancey,  W.  L..  114;  and  South 
ern  social  system,  61-62; 
favors  importation  of  slaves, 
134;  attends  Democratic  con 
vention  at  Cincinnati,  138;  on 
issue  of  popular  sovereignty. 
142;  at  Charleston  convention, 
145 


14  DAY  USE 


GENERAL  LIBRARY .  u.C.  BERKELEY 


